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SOME ACCOUNT 



OF 



JOHN DUKE OF AEGYLL 



AND HIS FAMILY. 



BY 

HIS GKEAT-NIECE LADY LOUISA STUAKT. 



[ For Private Circulation. ] 



LONDON : 

PRINTED BY W. CLOWES & SONS, STAMFORD STREET. 

1863. 



> ' K *\^ 



205449 
5 15 



( 3 ) 



The following Memoir was written by Lady Louisa 
Stuart, daughter of the Earl of Bute, Minister of 
George III., for the purpose of giving to Caroline Lucy, 
Lady Scott, an account of her great-grandfather John 
Duke of Argyll, and of his family. 

Lady Scott was descended from the Duke, through 
her mother (Lady Louisa's very dear friend), Lady 
Frances Scott, second wife of Arclnbald Douglas of 
Douglas, created Baron Douglas. 

Lady Frances Scott was sister of Henry Duke of 
Buccleuch, and posthumous daughter of Francis Earl 
of Dalkeith, by his wife, Lady Caroline Campbell, 
eldest daughter of John Duke of Argyll and Greenwich. 
Lady Dalkeith married secondly the Eight Honourable 
Charles Townshend, who died Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer. She was created Baroness Greenwich, with 
remainder to the issue male of her second marriage ; 
but, a daughter only by Mr. Townshend surviving her, 
the title became extinct at her death. 

The accompanying genealogical tree shows Lady 
Scott's descent from the Duke of Argyll, and also Lady 
Louisa Stuart's connection with the family. 

H. 

July, 1863. 



B 2 



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sY 



SOME ACCOUNT, &o. 



James Eael of Bute, my grandfather, married Lady 
Anne Campbell, the sister of his two chief friends, John 
Duke of Argyll, and Archibald Earl of Islay; and, 
dying early, appointed them guardians of his children. 
My father, who went to Eton school at seven years old, 
returned no more to Scotland till almost a man ; but 
passed his holidays at the home of one of his uncles, 
most frequently at that of the Duke, with whose 
daughter he was therefore bred up as a brother. 

The early history of the Duke and Duchess, a very 
singular one, was often told me by my mother, who, 
besides the fragments of it that general report and 
family tradition could furnish, had gathered its minutest 
details from two of their contemporary friends — Lady 
Suffolk (concerning whom see Lord Orford) and Mrs. 
Kingdon, a remarkable person, still living in my 
mother's days, and at past ninety years old retaining all 
her faculties, although thought " a little ancient," * 
according to Swift, when maid of honour to Queen 
Anne. 

Mrs. Warburton — respectable young ladies were not 
yet styled Misses — Mrs. Jane Warburton, a country 

* " Colonel Disney said of Jenny Kingdon, the maid of honour, who 
is a little ancient, that the Queen should give her a brevet to act as a 
married woman." — Svrift's Journal to Stella. 



( 6 ) 

gentleman's daughter, of an old Cheshire family, was 
maid of honour at the same time. By what means or 
interest she became so, I never could understand ; for, 
though well born, in a herald's sense of the words, her 
education had not fitted her for a stately, elegant court. 
Accustomed as we have now so long been to the quick 
general communication which throws the whole king- 
dom together, it is very difficult to carry our ideas back 
a century or more ; to the period when there were no 
stage-coaches, no post-horses, no turnpike-roads, and 
when, in the distant counties, men made their wills 
before they undertook a journey to London. The habits 
of the town and country were then, of course, much 
more distinct from each other. Mrs. Warburton, raw 
from Cheshire, brought with her a coarseness of lan- 
guage and manners which we should hardly expect to 
find in the dairy-maid of her father's equal at present. 
Unluckily, she had few personal charms to make amends 
for the rusticity, ignorance, and want of breeding that 
soon rendered her the standing jest of her companions 
in office. The honourable sisterhood then subsisting 
were as fond of spitefully teazing each other as their 
predecessors, celebrated by Count Hamilton, or their 
successors in Queen Charlotte's train; so what a life 
poor Jenny Warburton led amongst them, ever blun- 
dering, getting into scrapes, and blurting out vulgar 
expressions, may easily be imagined. One of her 
bright sayings remains upon record. The removals of the 
court (while there was a court) from palace to palace 
were superintended by a state-officer called the Har- 



( 7 ) 

binger. As the ladies consulted together about their 
packages, on a rumour of the Queen's going suddenly 
to Windsor, " Well ! for my part," said Jenny, " I 
shan't trouble myself — must not the Scavenger take care 
of us maids of honour ? " 

This was her situation, when John Duke of Argyll 
arrived from the Continent with all his blushing honours 
thick upon him, and a military reputation inferior to 
Marlborough's alone. Trained under King William, who 
gave him a Dutch regiment before he was seventeen, he 
had passed his life either in the field or in transacting 
the public business of Scotland, and mingled with 
London society rarely, only in the intervals between 
his campaigns, By this means he was a sight, an object 
of curiosity, to many of the company at a crowded draw- 
ing-room on the Queen's birthday, where he made his 
appearance newly invested with the garter, the admired 
hero of the hour. Lady Mary Wortley says that women 
see men with their ears. He might have gained by 
being so seen ; but he had likewise everything to 
attract and charm the eye — personal beauty, an expres- 
sive countenance, a commanding air, and the most easy, 
engaging gracefulness of manner. My mother, who was 
unborn at the time, and could not have known him till 
five-and-twenty years after it, described him as, even 
then, one of the finest-looking men she ever beheld, as 
well as the most pleasing ; and Lady Betty Mackenzie 
used to affirm that my brother Charles (of whose beauty 
you have heard the fame) was his very picture. 

Thus much premised, you will not wonder that he 



( 8 ) 

should have been the chief subject of conversation at a 
dinner which the Duke of Shrewsbury, Lord Chamber- 
lain of the Household, gave to the maids of honour, 
according to the usage of Queen Anne's days, upon her 
birthday. The cloth being removed, and the ladies' 
toasts called for, while all the rest named old bishops 
or generals, the men farthest from their thoughts, honest 
Mrs. Warburton went straight to the man uppermost in 
hers, and fairly toasted the Duke of Argyll. Her col- 
leagues set up a shout of laughter. — " Oh, ho ! He was 
her favourite, was he ? Truly she had taken care not 
to choose too humbly : they wished he did but know his 
valuable conquest; no doubt he would be amazingly 
flattered — perhaps made rather too vain ! " And thus 
the raillery, or, as we moderns term it, the quizzing, went 
on, till the victim fell a-crying, and the master of the 
house was forced to interpose and make peace. At 
night, when everybody met again at the ball, the Duke 
of Shrewsbury said to Argyll, who stood near him, " My 
Lord, you little think what mischief you have occasioned 
to-day. A poor young lady has been shedding bitter 
tears on your account." " Upon my account ! How 
so ? " Shrewsbury told him what had passed. " Oh, 
poor thing ! " exclaimed he ; " it was very hard upon her, 
indeed. I have a great mind to go and talk to her, by 
way of avenging her cause. Which is she ? Introduce 
me." — And the quizzers, to their astonishment, and, as 
Mrs. Kingdon acknowledged, their no small mortifi- 
cation, saw him devote himself to Jenny Warburton for 
the remainder of the evening. Possibly what they threw 



( 9 ) 

out in scorn came nearer the truth than they suspected. 
No man can help being a little flattered by the sincere, 
involuntary preference of almost any young woman ; 
and he might secretly imagine that the impulse of such 
a preference had thrown the innocent girl off her guard. 
Be this as it might, one conversation gave birth to others ; 
these led to visits. The visits grew frequent, grew daily ; 
and in a short time his attachment to her became 
notorious, and was as passionate as extraordinary. 

The wonder of it, however, lay principally in her 
want of beauty. Her other deficiencies were not calcu- 
lated to disgust a man of very peculiar opinions, whose 
shining abilities and loftiness of mind did not prevent 
his harbouring the most illiberal contempt of women. 
At Athens of yore, it is said, all reputable matrons 
and virgins were nonentities, shut up within four walls 
to pursue their domestic labours unheard of and unseen ; 
while knowledge, accomplishments, vivacity, everything 
that can render society agreeable, belonged exclusively 
to the courtezans. Now the Duke of Argyll thought this 
just as it should be, or rather as it necessarily must be, 
and actually was. He had been married very young to 
a rich citizen, whom he hated : they parted quickly, and 
the little acquaintance he could be said to have had 
with women since, was confined to the followers of a 
camp ; or, if a few foreign ladies came in his way, you 
may be sure he passed upon them the same general 
sentence as Captain Winterbottom,* in the ' Mirror ' ; 

* " Koman ladies? Aye, they are papists; and tliey are all ." 

Mirror, No. 97. 



( io ) 

for where inveterate prejudice reigns paramount, the 
highest mind will judge like the lowest. In a word, he 
believed scarcely any woman truly virtuous ; but held 
it certain that none could be so, who had the slightest 
share of mental endowments, natural or acquired. And 
though Jenny Warburton was quite free from these im- 
pediments to chastity, yet, trusting to the inherent 
frailty of the sex and the liberty allowed a maid of 
honour, he at first concluded that she would fall his easy 
prey. But when on the contrary she proved absolutely 
immoveable, not to be tempted by promises, or presents, 
or magnificent offers, nor yet to be worked upon by all 
the arts and powers of captivation, which he could not 
but know he eminently possessed, his admiration ex- 
ceeded even his surprise. He remained convinced that 
he had found the pearl of price, the most virtuous woman, 
if not the only one in the world. All the while never 
doubting that this heroic resistance cost her dear, and 
was the fruit of many a painful struggle with secret love. 
Here his own ardent imagination, aided by his vanity, 
led him into a trifling mistake. Virtuous, the good 
simple soul really was, and from principle steadily ob- 
serving those plain precepts which her limited capacity 
permitted her to comprehend ; but in the present 
instance it cost her no struggle at all. Virtue had 
neither a warm constitution, nor a tender heart to 
contend with ; and as for romantic love, its torments, 
raptures, conflicts, illusions, perplexities — nothing in Sir 
Isaac Newton's works could have been less intelligible 
to a mind like Jenny's. She positively would not, for 



( 11 ) 

all his Grace was worth (and so she told him), be 

that thing, whose proper name it did not abhor her, as 
it did poor Desdemona, to speak very distinctly. But 
she had no delicacy to be wounded by the affronting 
proposal ; nor did she see in it any reason for keeping 
him at a greater distance than before, since she felt 
herself in no danger ; and it was not forbidden by the 
Ten Commandments, nor in any part of the Bible, to 
let a man, whether handsome or ugly, sit by one's fire- 
side an hour or two every morning. Their intercourse, 
therefore, continued undiminished; continued so for 
years. And what was remarkable, but a proof that the 
world can sometimes be just, it raised no scandalous 
reports to her prejudice : the town, the court, nay the 
sister maids of honour — watchful spies upon all that 
passed — bore witness to its perfect innocence, and pro- 
nounced her character unimpeachable. 

On the death of Queen Anne, Jenny would in all 
probability have travelled back to her father's seat in 
Cheshire, with or without a small pension, if the Whig 
leaders whom that event brought into power had not 
whispered to each other, "We must provide for Mrs. 
Warburton, that we may secure the Duke of Argyll." 
Consequently her name stood foremost in the list of 
ladies appointed maids of honour to the new Princess of 
Wales (Queen Caroline), who no sooner arrived in Eng- 
land herself, and began to study the carte du pays — the 
relations of things and persons here — than she also took 
care to treat the object of his Grace's regard with par- 
ticular attention. 



( 12 ) 

But in less than two years after the Queen, died the 
Duchess of Argyll, his separated wife, who had long 
been a languishing invalid, hopeless of recovery. A 
fever of gossipping instantly ran through the court. 
"What would happen? Would the Duke verily and 
indeed marry Jenny Warburton? or would he now 
come to his senses, make her his best bow, and seek 
out a more advantageous match elsewhere?" — for he 
was held to be rather too fond of money, and Jenny had 
not twenty-pence portion. When Queen Caroline heard 
the news, the feeling of one woman for another made 
her say to Lady Suffolk (then Mrs. Howard), " How I 
pity that poor Warburton! Her agitation must be 
cruel ; and she must so dread appearing in public, where 
everybody will be whispering, every eye watching her 
looks ! Go and tell her I excuse her from attendance ; 
she need not wait to-day,* nor indeed till all this tattle 
has subsided." Mrs. Howard hastened with the good- 
natured message; but instead of relieving the person 
pitied, whom she found sitting, stitching with the greatest 
composure, it only made her stare. " Not wait to-day ! 
Why must not I wait ? What's the matter ? Is the 
Princess angry with me ? Have I done anything ? " 
" Done ! Bless us, no ! My dear Mrs. Warburton, it 
is Her Boyal Highness's kind consideration for you. 
She concludes you cannot like to wait ; she is afraid of 
your being distressed." " Dear I I always like waiting 
exceedingly, and I a'n't in distress; who told her I 

* The maids of honour then lived in the palace, and there was a 
sort of drawing-room every day. 



( 13 ) 

was?" "Oh! she is sure it must overpower you; you 
will never be able to stand it." " Not able to stand ! 
Why, does she think me sick ? Pray tell her I am as 
well as ever I was in my life, and perfectly able to stand : 
it's the oddest fancy to have come into her head ! " And 
back went Mrs. Howard, laughing, to make the Princess 
quite easy about the agitations and sensibilities of poor 
Warburton. 

Not so cool was the other party concerned. He flew 
to her with ardour, wanted to omit the form of mourning 
for a woman with whom he had long ceased to think 
himself connected, and urged her to let their hands be 
joined without delay. This she peremptorily refused, 
though, as it appeared, rather from a whimsical kind of 
superstition than any sentimental nicety : * No, indeed, 
she would never marry a man who had a wife above 
ground — not she." And all his arguments and entreaties 
being answered only with the same words, repeated over 
and over again, he was forced to relinquish his design. 
In six months' time,* when the decent ceremonial had 
been observed, and the first wife might be presumed 
quite safe in her grave, their union took place. 

Marriage, you know, is held an eminent breaker of 
spells, and Time another. Yet, palpably bewitched as 
the Duke of Argyll was, neither could accomplish his 
disenchantment. To say he proved an excellent hus- 
band would be speaking poorly : he remained throughout 

* The peerage books make the first duchess die in January, 1716, 
and the duke marry again in June, 1717. But both events happened 
in 1717. Before the New Style began, the year was held to commence 
in March. 



( 14 ) 

life a faithful, doating, adoring lover. My mother told 
me she had often seen him stop on entering the room, 
stand a moment or two gazing at the Duchess as at the 
loveliest object on earth, then come forward and clasp 
her fondly to his bosom. Upon which she never failed 
to look round and cry, " Do you see, you young folks ? 
On such a day we shall have been married so many 
years : will your husbands' love last as long, think ye ? " 
Human affections are so wayward, that his love perhaps 
lasted the longer for the comfortable indifference with 
which it was repaid — an indifference, however, which 
she could not help. She loved him as much as she had 
the faculty of loving anything, and Dido or Eloisa could 
have done no more. His infatuation did literally equal 
what philtres and sorcery were believed to produce of 
old; since, over and above the charm of transcendant 
virtue, she certainly had that of beauty in his eyes, 
although in no other person's. My mother one day 
downright affronted him by happening to observe that 
a picture of her just brought home, was very like. 
" Like ? " repeated he, hastily, " no, not like at all : how 
can anybody think it so ? It does not do her justice in 
any respect. But step this way, my dear, and I will show 
you another sort of likeness " — taking out of his pocket 
a beautiful miniature without the least resemblance (that 
she could discern) to her Grace. Much embarrassed, 
she began to praise the painting. " Yes " — said he, as 
to himself, not minding her — " this is my Jane." 

This uncommon passion stood the test of what in 
many cases has poisoned matrimonial comfort — of a dis- 



( 15 ) 

appointment too apt to put men unreasonably out of 
humour with their wives. Without undervaluing women 
as much as he did, it was natural that the head of so 
great a family should long for a son; and he longed 
most inordinately : while, as if to tantalize him, daughter 
perversely followed daughter, to the number of five (one 
dying a child) ; and his hopes, often renewed, regularly 
ended in fresh mortification — not the less bitter because 
Lord Islay was his presumptive heir. The brothers 
frequently disagreed about politics, and usually about 
everything else ; at some times were on a foot of inti- 
macy, at others not upon speaking terms. I have heard 
my father say, that when he was a boy under their joint 
direction, he could remember occasions where (non- 
intercourse chancing to prevail) all arrangements re- 
specting him were to be made by letter. At best, there 
was that direct fundamental difference in their natures, 
which will rarely allow the nearest and even the kindest 
relations to be partial sympathising friends. The one 
was, properly speaking, a hero ; the other, altogether a 
man of this world. The Duke thought Lord Islay un- 
dignified and time-serving ; Lord Islay thought the 
Duke wrong-headed and romantic. Yet both were 
assuredly superior men. John had genius, with all the 
lights and shades thereunto appertaining; Archibald 
strong clear sense, sound judgment, and thorough know- 
ledge of mankind. John, a soldier from his cradle, was 
warm-hearted, frank, honourable, magnanimous, but 
fiery-tempered, rash, ambitious, haughty, impatient of 
contradiction; Archibald, bred a lawyer, was cool, 



( 16 ) 

shrewd, penetrating, argumentative — an able man of 
business, and a wary, if not crafty politician. " I wanted 
to discuss such an affair with my brother," he would say, 
" but all went wrong. I saw the Tollemache * blood 
beginning to rise, so I e'en quitted the field." 

To resume the parallel. John took pleasure in wit, 
poetry, and the belles lettres ; Archibald in philosophical 
experiments, mechanics, natural history, and what had 
no name and little existence in his days, but is now 
called Political Economy. He planted your neighbour 
Hunt's garden for Sir Harry Bellenden, and made a 
place for himself (Whitton) out of a piece of Hounslow 
Heath, on purpose to try what shrubs and trees he could 
bring the barrenest soil to bear. The Duke of Argyll 
had a kind of court round him, consisting of a few sen- 
sible party-men, not a few Scotch dependants, a set of 
dull old officers who had served under his command, and 
a whole tribe of Campbell-cousins. Amongst these was 
the very handsome, very stupid, Colonel Jack Campbell, 
in future himself Duke of Argyll, and grandfather of 
the present family. Lord May's humble companions 
were the ingenious men who assisted him in his scientific 
pursuits, or those whose inventions he patronised. Con- 
versing as he did with all manner of people, yet still 
keeping his proper place in the best and highest society, 
the younger brother could not well be supposed to share 
the elder's prejudice against intelligent women. He 

* Their mother, a lady of very high spirit, was a Tollemache, 
daughter of the Duchess of Lauderdale (Countess of Dysart in her own 
right) by her first husband, Sir Lionel Tollemache. 



( 17 ) 

saw women (and men too) just as they were, had no 
toleration for fools of either sex, and felt a supreme 
contempt for his sister-in-law, who, in return, hated him 
cordially, and delighted in pecking at his friends or 
picking up nonsensical stories about his amours. When- 
ever she deplored her ill-fortune in bringing the Duke 
no male heir, the burthen of the lament was sure to be — 
" Aye ! the estate will go to my Lord Islay, and he will 

give it all to his ." If I say his mistresses and his 

natural children, you will think me sufficiently plain- 
spoken: the terms she used belonged to much more 
primitive English; for having been so long the com- 
panion of a man whose polished language was almost 
proverbial, had not in the least improved her diction. 
It is true that he never dreamed of correcting it : his 
beloved Jane's vulgarity passed for uprightness and 
simplicity with him, and who else might reprehend 
the Duchess of Argyll ? 

Her female court, the wives of the cousins and re- 
tainers, were of course more obsequious to her than 
she had ever been to Queen Caroline or Queen Anne. 
And what homage was paid her by her own Cheshire 
relations we may conjecture from the reverential style 
of her very mother, in those letters found among Lady 
Greenwich's papers. • 

I do not deny that the good lady seems to have been 
formed by nature for an old nurse ; yet I question whether 
Eton would have fallen quite so prostrate before you if 
you had married a Duke of the blood royal. It is, or it 
was, an etiquette with Princes (possibly brought from 

c 



( 18 ) 

Germany), that in formally addressing the Sovereign, 
his collateral relations should alter the term of kindred, 
if it implied superiority. For example, when Princess 
Amelia wrote to our late King, her nephew, she sub- 
scribed herself " his Majesty's most dutiful niece." Old 
Mrs. Warburton ought to have adopted this form, and 
remained " her Grace's most dutiful daughter ; " for so 
completely does the poor woman's mind quail beneath 
the awful idea of a Duchess, that she can scarcely find 
words to express her grateful sense of the honour con- 
ferred upon her when " the dear young ladies " (her 
own grandchildren) are sent to pay her a visit in the 
country. 

With regard to the acquaintances her Grace made in 
the world at large, where everybody must make some, 
they could hardly help having manners more genteel 
than her own; but as there are always to be found 
goodies and gossips of very high quality, they were pretty 
much upon a par with her otherwise, and, like herself, 
guiltless of any affinity to that proscribed class, " your 
clever women," whom her Lord's maxims authorised her 
to esteem for the most part no better than they should 
be. Gladly did she bar her doors against all such cattle 
— one person excepted, who by his express mandate had 
constant admittance, free egress and regress, and even 
no small share of authority. This was Lady Suffolk, 
whose judgment he valued so highly as to insist upon 
her being consulted in all cases which he felt his Jane 
incompetent to decide. 

I asked my mother how such a respect for Lady 



( 19 ) 

Suffolk's understanding could be reconciled to his con- 
temptuous opinion of the sex ? " Oh ! easily enough," 
replied she; "you may be confident he thought she 
had once been George the Second's mistress ; therefore 
had purchased her superiority at the established price, 
and was an instance to confirm his system instead of 
defeating it." 

It did nevertheless undergo something like a defeat 
in the latter part of his life, after he had finally broken 
with Sir Kobert Walpole and joined the Tories against 
the court. Opposition, you may observe, is almost 
always a much more sociable body than the partisans 
of Government. The part of attacking raises people's 
spirits, gives them the spring of a vigorous courser on 
rising ground, makes them all hope and animation. 
Ministers have a load of care on their shoulders ; they are 
to do the business as well as to talk about it ; they 
are a little teased and perplexed by their enemies, and 
a vast deal more by their friends; they give formal 
dinners, as in duty bound, and rejoice when the task is 
performed. 

Not to mention that, having the solid loaves and 
fishes to distribute, it is natural they should neglect 
using lesser means of attraction. In the meanwhile 
their adherents, all and each out of humour about some- 
thing or other, as well as fully occupied with their 
own schemes and pretensions, are far better disposed 
to sit still and grumble than to make any lively exertions 
in support of the common cause. Opposition, on the 
contrary, who have only the easy task of finding fault, 

c 2 



( 20 ) 

and as yet no bones of contention among themselves, 
are gay and disentangled, ready to engage in rounds of 
dinners and suppers, festive meetings, pleasant parties, 
and all sorts of amusements. It is no slight object with 
them to render their side of the question the most 
fashionable. Making their houses agreeable operates as 
a measure of policy, keeps their troops together, and 
gains fresh recruits, especially amongst the rising young 
men of promising talents. The ladies whom this brings 
into play, pleased to be of use and consequence, fall to 
work with their whole souls in behalf of the party their 
husbands, or lovers, or friends belong to ; and though 
subject to spoil matters by their violence, yet sometimes 
succeed in managing them by their address. 

The Duke of Argyll, now forced to bear his part in 
such a bustling scene, saw more of the real world and 
lived more in mixed company than he had ever done 
before ; and thus unavoidably became acquainted with 
several women of fashion — women of exemplary lives 
and unspotted reputation — whom, to his great surprise, 
he found remarkably conversable and well-informed. 
He acknowledged to the other men having hitherto 
disbelieved that any characters of the kind could exist ; 
and he owned, with candour, that the discovery raised 
serious doubts whether his former notions of the sex 
had had a just foundation. Let me tell you, the 
frank avowal of these doubts was the proof of a great 
mind; since an ordinary one, equally under the do- 
minion of prejudice, is ever precisely the horse in the 
proverb, whom one man may bring to the water, but 



( 21 ) 

twenty cannot make him drink. Forcing open my 
eyes, and inducing me to examine the object placed 
before them, are quite different things ; nor need we go 
far to light on persons who, supposing them to have the 
same given prepossessions as the Duke, combated by 
the same facts, would solve the difficulty by resolving 
to believe that the ladies in question secretly favoured 
their footmen ; and, settling the matter thus, cling to 
their own opinion as tenaciously as before* 

In the Duke's case, conviction or wisdom came too 
late, as she mostly does. All his daughters, except 
Lady Mary, were grown up ; his lot was cast, his career 
nearly closed; his home-circle past all chance of im- 
provement. My mother said it was absolutely grievous 
and provoking to behold the society (if society it could 
be called) of that house; the spirit of dulness pre- 
dominating; the toad-eaters, the prosers, the chatter- 
boxes, the old housewives, and housekeepers surrounding 
a man not only so eminent, but so peculiarly agreeable, 
who, with a tone and manner that would have made 
nonsense pleasing, had such a variety of interesting 
conversation. But those that (like herself) were capable 
of tasting it, seldom got leave to enjoy it for five minutes 
in peace. Either his Jane came up and took the words 
out of his mouth without ceremony, or else the clack of 
her tea-table arose, and some tale of scandal, or history 
of a game at quadrille, or dissertation about buying 
dishclouts drowned his harmonious voice, and drove 
him to take refuge in a corner with one of his political 
or military followers. Amongst other gifts, he told a 



( 22 ) 

story admirably, with particular energy and terseness, 
and, conscious of excelling, did not dislike to find a 
willing hearer. Alas ! three times out of four, no 
sooner had he begun than the Duchess's shrill pipe 
struck in : " No, no ; it was not so ;" " No, now, my 
lord, you don't tell that right ; let me." Upon which, 
moving quietly off, he fell into his usual way of walking 
up and down the room, with his head bent and his 
hands behind him (a habit which was also my father's), 
till she had hammered and stammered out as much of 
the matter as she could recollect ; then, turning round 

with a placid smile, he would say, " There , Jane 

has told it you." 

Notwithstanding many similar instances of com- 
plaisance, you must not think he w 7 as a man governed 
by his wife. No one could be more master at home, 
where his decrees, once issued, were the nod of Jupiter, 
allowing no resistance, nor, indeed, meeting with any ; 
for a sense of duty disposed her to obey ; and although 
she had the obstinacy of a fool in the petty concerns 
that she viewed as her own province, yet it is but fair 
to say that she was quite free from any taint of the 
cunning which often attends weak understandings. 
Therefore, she never sought to sway him by cajoling 
or artifice. Plain truth and downright honesty were 
the principal features of her character ; she always trod 
a straight path, and always meant to take the right 
one. In a w r ord, she was a good woman, to the utmost 
of her knowledge and power. On these valuable 
(or rather invaluable) qualities he used to declare 



'( 23 ) 

that his strong affection for her was grounded, and who 
can call such a basis insufficient ? 

He would, however, as soon have consulted her cat 
as herself upon any point of importance. When 
graver subjects demanded consideration, the wife, the 
woman, was to keep her due distance, and not presume 
to intermeddle. But then grave subjects and im- 
portant points are so few, — light and unimportant so 
many, — and these latter start up so continually in the 
course of every common current working-day, that the 
party to whom they are carelessly (but constantly) 
yielded creeps on acquiring, crumb by crumb, a wonder- 
ful portion of something which, if not actual dominion, 
does just as well. Nor is this the least apt to happen 
where she has been held at the outset too utterly insig- 
nificant to alarm the pride of imperial man with a 
suspicion that it was in the nature of things she should 
ever prove the conqueror. Could a wren possibly 
possess some glimmering of human intellect, it would 
have a far better chance of influencing us than a whole- 
reasoning elephant, or one of Swift's Houynhyms 
who, coming with the wisdom of Solomon, would find 
us all set in battle-array to oppose him. The Duchess 
was her husband's darling little bird, whom he loved to 
indulge, dreaded to hurt, and could not have the heart 
to handle roughly. In addition to this tender feeling, 
allowances were to be made for the weakness of the 
sex, and its whimsies and its waywardness ; and it was 
idle to argue with women, and women must have their 
own foolish way. And thus it ended in her having hers 



( 24 ) 

pretty generally in all ordinary daily proceedings, which 
were all she cared for. 

On the head of money — that frequent cause of dis- 
sension between husband and wife — they did not differ 
very widely, both being of saving tempers. Not that I 
was by any means taught to suppose him the " miser " 
he is represented by Lord Orford — ever caustic, and 
especially bitter against him as the opponent of his 
father. My authorities pictured him as strictly just, 
habitually regular and careful — maybe, somewhat too 
careful — in his expenses, but never mean ; very capable 
of generous actions, and, when he gave, giving nobly. 
His table, his equipage, his whole establishment, were 
as handsome as possible, and as well suited to his rank 
and fortune. In the lesser domestic details, which he 
knew nothing of, and she managed as she pleased, 
Jenny Warburton's head would sometimes peep out 
over the Duchess's robes. Yet she was charitable to 
the poor, and on the whole rather narrow than covetous, 
only retaining here and there fragments of those early 
habits of frugality which, in her maiden state, had been 
both necessary and laudable. After his death she remem- 
bered with reverence the grandeur of his notions; and 
though still occasionally disturbed about twopence-half- 
penny, was desirous that in the main her arrangements 
should be such as became the Duke of Argyll's widow. 

You are sensible how often things, seemingly of no 
moment at all, come, in some unforeseen manner, or at 
some distance of time, to bear strongly on others of the 
greatest, and it is amusing to detect the concealed 



( 25 ) 

chain of circumstances by which this is brought to pass. 
But we need not trace the course and effects of her 
Grace's influence through any intricate mazes : it went 
directly to one point — in most people's opinion, suffi- 
ciently material. The daughters, being daughters of 
the useless, mischievous sex — their birth a calamity, 
themselves an incumbrance — were unfortunately classed 
amongst the trifles left to her sole superintendence ; 
their father interfering only with a negative, so curious 
and characteristic that it would be a pity to pass it over 
unnoticed. He forbade their learning French, because 
" One language was enough for a woman to talk in ;" and 
the Duchess, who did not know a word of it, had not 
the least mind to dispute the position. As what they 
should be taught was a question wholly beneath his 
attention, and as she was convinced by her own experi- 
ence and example, ready at hand to refer to, that most 
other branches of education were equally needless with 
foreign tongues, the young ladies learned writing and 
accompts from the steward, and needlework from a 
governess very little superior to the housekeeper. 
" For after all," reasoned their mother, " if you had a 
pack of girls — if you were so unlucky — what upon 
earth could you do with them but find husbands to 
take them off your hands ? " Well, then, she knew 
nothing of this, and she never was taught that ; and 
pray, had not she married? Aye, and married the 
Duke of Argyll? No wonder she thought the argu- 
ment conclusive. Her grudge against them for not 
being boys (which was yet greater than his), together 



( 26 ) 

with the natural indifference of her temper, prevented 
her concerning herself about them, while children, 
farther than to ascertain that they were safe and well ; 
and she could rest satisfied without constant ocular 
demonstration of that, seldom suffering them to come 
and disturb the dogs and cats who occupied her draw- 
ing-room, plagued the company at dinner,* and en- 
grossed all the fondness she had to bestow. Lady 
Caroline, the eldest daughter, dined below stairs on a 
Sunday ; and was just so far distinguished in a few other 
particulars as to let the humble friends of the family 
perceive that it would be prudent to begin celebrating 
her charms and perfections. Otherwise, she chiefly in- 
habited the nursery, which the rest hardly ever quitted. 
At Sudbrook this was the small house, built on purpose 
for them and called the Young Ladies' House. Here 
they did what they pleased, nobody caring, and romped 
as much as they pleased with my father and uncle 
when the Eton holidays added them to the party. 

If Time would have but stood still, this order of 
things might have lasted for ever unchanged. But 
he has a trick of moving onward : the children grew 
up, as all children do, and the parents — although sur- 
prised at it, as most parents are — could no longer ex- 

* One poor mortal, a daily guest, had an antipathy to cats. " To 
break Mm of it," as she said, she would place a huge he-cat on the back 
of his chair as he sat at table. The Duke, after making fruitless 
efforts to protect him, was forced to laugh it off as a joke not worth 
minding. Her dogs were always pugs ; and down to the end of her 
clays every visitor on every visit was assured that Pug and Puss (pro- 
nounced alike) did not live together like dog and cat. 



( 27 ) 

elude them from their society. The seven stages of 
human life have been the same ever since Adam and 
Eve commenced peopling the world; yet few persons 
can slide from the second to the third — from childhood 
into youth — without amazing their elder friends as 
much as if the thing had never happened before. This 
said in a parenthesis, we resume the House of Argyll. 
Lady Caroline, the eldest child, and in some sort the 
heiress (for the Duke meant to make her a son by 
giving her his English estates), was presented at Court, 
and her sisters were admitted into the parlour, where, 
for some time, fear of their father kept them all in 
silence and decorum — Lady Mary excepted, who was 
too young (being only fifteen or sixteen when he died) 
and had too much of the Tollemache blood to be afraid 
of anybody. Her fearless prattle entertained him ; and 
she grew a favourite, to the great detriment of her 
future disposition. It is strange how very inconsiderate, 
men, sensible men — nay, men of great abilities — will 
often be in their treatment of children. Keversing the 
practice of the children themselves, who invariably talk 
to their dolls as rational creatures, they toy with their 
luckless plaything as if it were destined never to be- 
come one, and had no more to do with mind and soul 
than a dancing-dog, or a monkey. I have repeatedly 
heard my father impute the ungovernable violence of 
Lady Mary's temper in after life to his uncle's injudi- 
cious indulgence of her at the period when she was just 
old enough to know she ought to overcome her passions, 
and young enough to have resisted them with some 



( 28 ) 

success. Not indulgence alone; for, exactly as you 
have seen a school-boy teach his pony to lash out, and 
his cur to snap at people's fingers, he took delight to 
put her in a fury, crying, " Look ! look at Mary ! " 
when she flew like a little tigress, screaming, scratching, 
and tearing; then, after laughing heartily, he would 
finish the improving lesson by coaxing her with sugar- 
plums to kiss and be friends. 

The timid reserve of the elder ladies did not last 
long. Lord Strafford, a very young man of large for- 
tune, happening to dine at their father's on his return 
from his travels, was so charmed with the beauty of 
the second, Lady Anne, that he immediately asked her 
in marriage. After she was disposed of, all restrictions 
seemed to cease — all bounds were broken down; the 
others freely exalted the discordant voices which they 
all inherited from their mother, and became the most 
noisy, hoydening girls in London. In my own day, 
when they were the most unmerciful censurers of young 
people's dress and behaviour, my mother — who had 
herself a mind far above laying an absurd stress upon 
trifles — used to laugh at certain of her recollections, 
and attribute their violent wrath against the gay world 
to spleen at growing old, and envy of the pleasures they 
could no longer partake. 

I mention my own day. Ere that could well be said 
to dawn, I remember having seen the last Earl of 
Lichfield ; a red-faced old gentleman, shaking all over 
with the palsy, who had almost drunk away his senses, 
and seemed hardly to know what he was saying or 



( 29 ) 

doing. Marvellous are the metamorphoses produced by 
Time. You may suppose I found it very difficult to 
believe that this object, formerly Lord Quarendon, had 
been not only handsome, lively, and agreeable, but 
much more — the most promising in point of parts 
amongst all the young men of the Tory (then the 
Opposition and Patriot) party — a bud of genius fostered 
by its chiefs as likely to prove the future pride of their 
garland. The Duke of Argyll, in particular, caressed 
and extolled him, made him free of his house, and, one 
might say, taught his family to admire him. Blind, 
meanwhile, like many a man in the same case, to the 
glaring probability that a young lady would not admire 
long without admitting some warmer feeling, he never 
asked himself how he should relish so natural an occur- 
rence. Lord Quarendon had a father alive, not in- 
clined to part with his money ; a mother and sisters to 
be provided for ; — in short, he was not by any means a 
great match. Therefore, since it was certain nothing 
but a great match would do for Lady Caroline Camp- 
bell, it never came into his Grace's head that either 
party could possibly think of the other. But they 
found it both possible and pleasant to think, and think 
on ; and he remained almost the only person not 
apprised of their mutual attachment, until Lord Dal- 
keith's making her serious proposals brought about a 
partial discovery. 

The Buccleuch family had rested in comparative 
obscurity for two or three generations past. However 
inclined King William had once appeared to favour the 



( 30 ) 

unfortunate Duke of Monmouth, yet a direct attempt 
to claim the Crown was a fact to be jealously remem- 
bered by its successive wearers; and, so far from 
reversing his attainder and restoring his honours, as 
was done in other cases (for instance, to the Argylls 
themselves), William hastened to bestow the title else- 
where, creating Lord Mordaunt Earl of Monmouth. 
The Duchess presently married a second husband, 
Lord Cornwallis, who had his own interests to mind. 
Lord Dalkeith, her eldest son, died in her lifetime, at 
thirty years old ; and her grandson, now Duke of Buc- 
cleuch, a man of mean understanding and meaner 
habits, did no credit to his ancestry. In his youth a 
match was settled between him and your grandmother, 
Lady Jane Douglas, but broken off ; and her brother, 
the Duke of Douglas, fought a duel with him in conse- 
quence. Supposing a story true which was current at 
the time, that she had owned to the Duke of Buccleuch 
her repugnance, and, throwing herself on his honour, 
desired to be screened from the anger of her relations, 
this duel would seem to denote something chivalrous 
on his part, auguring better things than ensued. He 
married another Lady Jane Douglas, the Duke of 
Queensberry's sister ; but, after her death, which hap- 
pened in a few years, plunged into such low amours, 
and lived so entirely with the lowest company, that, 
although he resided constantly in the neighbourhood of 
London, his person was scarcely known to his equals, 
and his character fell into utter contempt.* 

* It was believed that not long before his death he married a 



( 31 ) 

Yet, in spite of the thousand disadvantages of having 
such a father, the son proved a gentleman; far from 
handsome, it was true — not of brilliant parts, no Lord 
Quarendon, but essentially good, amiable, and worthy. 
These qualities, added to great rank and fortune, made 
the Duke of Argyll readily accept his offer, not at all 
doubting his daughter's cheerful concurrence. And if 
(as I grant it probable) he thought she had nothing to 
do with the business farther than to receive his com- 
mands and obey them, still you must beware of going 
headlong, and setting him down as an unfeeling tyrant. 
To judge fairly of those who lived long before us, or of 
foreigners, we should put quite apart both the usages 
and the notions of our own age or country, and strive to 
adopt for the moment such as prevailed in theirs. He 
followed hard upon the time, remember, when it was 
common for mere children to be united, or at least 
betrothed, by their parents ; when Lady Kussel, had 
she been asked, in the midst of her negotiation with 
Lord Devonshire, whether young Mistress Eachel was 
enamoured of his son, would infallibly have deemed the 
question an impertinent, insipid jest, or the inquirer a 
madman. 

Nor were marriages thus arranged among the great 

Windsor washerwoman. Your uncle, Henry Duke of Buccleuch, told 
me that when he was a boy at Eton, a middle-aged woman of decent 
appearance one day insisted upon seeing him. She gazed at him 
earnestly, kissed and blessed him, and, without saying anything more, 
went away. He had afterwards reason to think that this was his 
grandfather's widow, who received an annuity from his guardians on 
condition of not assuming the title. 



( 32 ) 

alone; the very proverb, framed, as all proverbs are, 
by and for the vulgar, " Marry your daughter betimes, 
for fear she should marry herself," is a convincing 
proof of the contrary. Consult, indeed, an author of 
much later date, one certainly not too well versed in 
the manners of high life, one whose theme and object it 
was to treat of love — Kichardson, I mean, the great 
father of modern novels — Kichardson himself cannot 
help betraying an evident predilection for matches thus 
soberly settled. In No. 97 of the ' Kambler ' (written 
by him) you find his beau ideal of a matrimonial trans- 
action carried on exactly as it ought to be. The young 
man can see the young woman only at church, where 
her beauty and pious demeanour win his heart. He 
applies to her parents through a mutual friend ; they 
acquaint her with his offer ; she is all resignation to 
their will, for perhaps (mark the perhaps) she had seen 
him at church likewise. Then it proceeds : " Her rela- 
tions applaud her for her duty; friends meet, points 
are adjusted, delightful perturbations, hopes, and a few 
lovers' fears fill up the vacant space, till an interview is 
granted" In plain English, the two persons concerned 
have never exchanged a single syllable in their lives 
till they meet as an affianced couple. And this he calls 
marrying for love ! Brush away all the fine words, and 
how far it differs from Dr. Johnson's scheme of people 
being paired by the Chancellor I leave you to deter- 
mine. But I have been drawn into a terrible long 
digression. 

As facts tell themselves, I need not say Lord Dal- 



( 33 ) 

keith's addresses were successful ; but you will be im- 
patient to hear what resistance they met with, and how 
it was overcome. When Miss Townshend eloped forty 
years afterwards, a vulgar, abusive newspaper, such as 
your present ' John Bull/ caught this old anecdote by 
the tail, and, giving a blundering version of it, bade her 
mother recollect " that she had nearly been in the oven 
herself." Upon which, Lady Greenwich thought fit to 
tell Lady Emily Kerr (Macleod) her own story in her 
own way. And a very fine one she made it as ever 
formed the foundation of tragedy or romance : a con- 
flict between passionate love and sacred duty, adorned 
with tears, fits, despair, and (for aught I know) deli- 
rium. She kept her bed, she said, for many days ; the 
physicians gave but faint hopes of her recovery ; — yet 
still her dear father remained inflexible. Then she had 
such a love, such a profound veneration for him — and, 
to say the truth, Lord Dalkeith was so unexceptionable. 
In short, after sufferings not to be described, she was 
led to the altar more dead than alive, and there plighted 
her unwilling vows. But in time, becoming sensible of 
her husband's excellences, she perceived the great 
wisdom of her father's choice, which (Heaven knew !) 
had made her far happier than she could have been 
had she followed her own foolish inclinations. 

Nothing could sound more reasonable; only, some- 
thing nearer the time of action, my mother heard a 
different tale from Lady Betty Mackenzie, who, though 
not wise, was ever a straightforward person of strict 
veracity. She freely acknowledged that a positive 



( 34 ) 

engagement subsisted between her sister and Lord 
Lichfield, perfectly well known to her mother and 
every other person in the house, saving its master. 
Even little Lady Mary could give her verdict upon the 
cause ; and she hit right, as children and young folks 
are sometimes led to do by their natural reason. " I 
know sister Caroline must not marry Lord Quarendon 
if papa disapproves of it; but, to be sure, she cannot 
marry anybody else." Sister Caroline did cry, as senti- 
ment required, for near a week ; and Lady Betty and 
Lady Strafford cried too, in concern for her distress, 
and dread of the scene likely to follow when papa 
should know all. Before this came to pass, however — 
to the best of Lady Betty's belief — one morning, on 
opening the unhappy lady's door, she was accosted with 
these words, " Well, sister, I have consented to marry 
my Lord Dalkeith," uttered in such an easy, indifferent 
tone, that she protested she stood staring as if a sudden 
blow had taken away her breath. Thenceforth she 
saw no more symptoms of grief or discontent : the old 
lover ceased to be named, the new one was graciously 
smiled upon, and everybody fell to discussing wedding- 
clothes and equipages with the usual alacrity. 

Very soon after their marriage the Duke did his son- 
in-law a most material service by obtaining for his 
father and family the restoration of one of the Duke of 
Monmouth's forfeited English peerages — the earldom of 
Doncaster, by which title their descendants now sit in 
Parliament. I mention this here to avoid future inter- 
ruption ; for we have not yet done with Lord Quarendon, 



( 35 ) 

who bore his disappointment so unlike a patient, good 
Christian as to prove that he put little faith (whoever 
might put much) in the reluctance of the bride, or her 
agonising struggles, or her pious submission to parental 
authority. He was furious: far too angry for any 
magnanimous feeling. He went about calling her a 
mercenary jilt to whoever would listen, with all the 
other epithets which men, whether of high or low 
degree, are apt to be lavish of upon such occasions. 
Not content with this, he took measures to lay the 
whole affair before the Duke of Argyll : it is even said, 
sent him her letters, — a severe revenge upon the person 
least to blame, since, in fact, the Duke had never ima- 
gined that anything more than a mere girlish fancy 
stood in the way of her accepting Lord Dalkeith. 
And, however great his displeasure might have been on 
finding her otherwise engaged without his consent, he 
was the last man in the world to have sanctioned, much 
less exacted, a direct breach of promise. He thought, 
like Walpole's Florian — 

" A soldier's honour is his virtue. Gownmen 
Wear it for show, and barter it for gold, 
And have it still : a soldier and his honour 
Exist together, and together perish." 

The blow, then, struck at his heart. Not solely on 
account of Lady Caroline's conduct (although that gave 
him mortification enough), but because it forcibly over- 
threw his good opinion of the Duchess. She had been 
privy to all. She had concealed all from him. She 
had helped her daughter to deceive him. There was 

d 2 



( 36 ) 

an end of his firm reliance on her affection, her truth, 
her integrity. The cherished illusion of his life was at 
length dispelled and done away. About the same time 
his health began to break ; a paralytic disorder afflicted 
his nerves ; but my mother said the tokens of a deeply- 
wounded spirit were very distinguishable from the 
effects of the disease, as was also the change of manner 
towards his Jane. He did not become harsh to her ; but 
his coldness, silence, and melancholy abstraction were 
striking, — tacit reproaches, altogether unfelt and even 
unperceived. The good woman, who in reality had 
erred only from sheer weakness and folly, being the 
dupe of a daughter cleverer than herself, saw nothing 
that ailed him but bodily illness ; and, to show due 
concern for that, fulfilled the duty of a faithful wife by 
fidgeting and fussing about him with a tormenting 
assiduity which must have been the one thing wanting 
to complete Job's trials. Teaze — teaze — teaze, from 
morning till night. ' Now, my lord, do eat this." 
" Now, my lord, don't eat that." " Now, pray put on 
your great coat." " Now, be sure you take your 
draught." " Now, you must not sit by the fire ; its too 
hot." " Now, you should not stand at the window ; its 
too cold." " Oh, how well I remember the way of it," 
said my mother ; " and how I used to pity the poor 
man ! " He never spoke one word in answer ; seldom 
raised his head to look at her; but, for the sake of 
peace, usually did as she would have him, seeming 
quite unable to contend. In this condition he lingered^ 
with transient gleams of amendment, but in the main 



( 37 ) 

drooping more and more, until repeated paralytic attacks 
carried him off, a twelvemonth after the marriage of 
Lady Dalkeith. 

It has been abundantly shown that the Duchess's 
nature was not susceptible of very violent emotions. 
She could grieve (as she loved) only as much as she 
could. Yet on this event she uttered an expression 
that was touching, because it implied a meek sense of 
her own inferiority of character. "Well" (said she, 
fetching a deep sigh), " I have been the favourite of a 
great man ! " She continued to inhabit Sudbrook and 
the town-house in Bruton-street, both of which he 
bequeathed her for her life ; and this outlasted his such 
a number of years that I myself have a faint recollection 
of being put into mourning on her decease. 

I once heard Lady Betty relate a circumstance that 
greatly contributed to depress her father's spirits in the 

last sad year of his life. Lord (I have totally 

forgotten the name), a very old acquaintance, whom he 
had not seen since they were both young men, came 
unexpectedly to Adderbury. The Duke gave him the 
most cordial reception, showed him his grounds, insisted 
he should stay dinner, and seemed so cheered by his 
company that the day passed over uncommonly well. 
But at parting, when he attended his guest to his 
carriage, " that creature" quoth Lady Betty, suddenly 
turned round on the step to whisper, " I had orders to 
give you this," slipped a paper into his hand, leaped in, 
and drove away. It was a letter from the Pretender, 
full of high-flown compliments on his Grace's public 



( 38 ) 

spirit in opposing the Court: a conduct which, it 
might be hoped, was a sure sign of his having at last 
(though late) espoused the rightful cause, and resolved 
to reinstate his lawful sovereign. Support like his 
must insure success ; and, were that once obtained, what 
reward could be denied him ? He instantly sent the 
letter to the King, together with another, professing 
unalterable loyalty and protesting his utter abhorrence 
of the treason suggested : protestations which were 
perfectly sincere; for the Hanover succession had no 
steadier friend. Yet that its enemies should have dared 
thus to tamper with him, and have interpreted his 
political conduct as forwarding their designs, wounded 
him to the very soul. He writhed under the insult, 
could not forget it ; and Lady Betty affirmed that to his 
last hour it rankled in his mind. 

His English dukedom of Greenwich became extinct ; 
his brother Archibald succeeded to the Argyll titles 
and estates ; and his eldest daughter inherited consider- 
able property, including Adderbury in Oxfordshire, 
and Caroline Park near Edinburgh. So she was rich, 
prosperous, and, above all, fortunate in a husband. By 
all I could gather concerning Lord Dalkeith, he be- 
longed to the species of those quiet, silent, dull men, 
who are overlooked in gay society and seldom men- 
tioned by the world. But I imagine he very much 
resembled his uncle Charles (the good) Duke of Queens- 
berry, in mildness, benevolence, kindness of heart, 
and extreme sweetness of temper. Like him, too, he 
fondly loved his wife, and was content to let the govern- 



( 39 ) 

ment be on her shoulder. Her Grace of Queensberry 
— a spoiled, wilful beauty, most bewitching, most per- 
verse and provoking, with superior natural parts, but 
what the Scotch term an enormous bee in her bonnet 
— wanted the control of a far stronger hand than the 
poor Duke's to .curb her innumerable whims and 
caprices, which ran riot, and would have tired out the 
patience of any other man breathing. Lady Dalkeith, 
a woman of a more common sort, could rest pretty well 
satisfied with having her own way in every particular, 
and be goodhumoured (at least while young) as long as 
she was pleased. Accordingly, her lord and she were 
reckoned the happiest of happy couples during the 
brief period of their married life. Placed at the head 
of the world, and of an age to enjoy its gifts, they spent 
their time gaily in entertaining their friends at home, 
or in seeking livelier pleasures abroad. 

You may have heard of their acting plays : this was 
set on foot by the Duchess of Queensberry,* who had 
always some rage, some reigning fancy, which she 
carried to excess. For one year she could think of 
nothing but the stage, and fitted up a small theatre in 
Queensberry House, where Otway's ' Orphan,' a good 
deal clipped and pared, and Young's * Kevenge,' were 
each acted three times. The performers were a family - 
party of brothers and sisters, or cousins bred up to- 

* She invited Quin, of whom she was very fond, down to Amesbury. 
" And now, Mr. Quin," said she, " I have been considering how to 
amuse you in the country. Suppose we act a play ? " " Madam," re- 
plied Quin, " if you asked a grocer to dinner, would you treat him with 



( 40 ) 

gether from childhood : Lord and Lady Dalkeith, 
Lady Betty (then unmarried), my father, Mr. Mac- 
kenzie, and a beautiful youth, Colonel Campbell's 
second son, long afterwards known to you as that beau- 
tiful old man Lord Frederic Campbell ; Mrs. Camp- 
bell's brother, Sir Harry Bellenden,.and two or three 
elderly dependants of the Argylls and Queensberrys 
were pressed into the service to fill minor parts ; the 
Duchess not acting herself, but indefatigably managing, 
prompting, and overlooking the whole. The ' Orphan,' 
in particular, succeeded so well through Lady Dalkeith's 
Monimia and my father's Castalio, that Frederick 
Prince of Wales had his wish to see it intimated to the 
Duke of Queensberry ; and it was therefore performed a 
fourth time for the Prince and Princess,* and the audi- 
ence they chose to nominate. For then, and down 
to a much later day, whenever any of the royal family 
accepted an entertainment from a subject, they pointed 
out the company they would have invited to meet 
them. The pictures you have seen of your grandfather 
and grandmother, and those of Lady Betty and Mr. 
Mackenzie, were taken in their dresses for the charac- 
ters of the ' Orphan.' Perhaps I dwell too long on these 
trifles ; in my own youth they pleased my imagination, 
and 1 had such delight in getting at all the details of 
former days that I believe I made my mother tell me 

* Behold the whole and sole foundations of my father's " having been 
used to act plays for the amusement of the Prince and Ms Court." Had 
Lord Henry Fitzgerald become a Minister, some memoir-writer would 
tell the world he had performed Varanes and Lord Trinket at Kich- 
mond House, to pay his court to the present King. 



( 41 ) 

every old story a thousand times, and teazed her with a 
thousand questions about every little circumstance. 

As I intimated above, the holiday-season of Lord and 
Lady Dalkeith's festivities was destined to have a very 
short duration. They had been married but about 
seven years, when the former, going for a few days to 
Adderbury with Sir James Peachy,* his intimate friend, 
and by alliance his near relation, was seized with a 
sudden illness. Danger came rapidly on, and the fourth 
day he died in Sir James's arms, having just had power 
to dictate and sign a will which his friend took down on 
the first scrap of paper at hand. This left to Lady 
Dalkeith ten thousand pounds — all he could dispose of 
— and constituted her the guardian of his children. 
Their eldest son had died an infant. There remained 
living, a daughter, Caroline, who survived her father 
but three or four years, and three boys — Henry, shortly 
after Duke of Buccleuch, James, and Campbell. 
ANOTHER CHILD t had not yet seen the light. 



The circles produced by throwing stones into water, 
dear Car, are no bad emblem of the influence which 
generations, as they pass, have on those that succeed 
them. That of the immediate parents upon the children 
is strong and visible ; the grandchildren show its traces 

* Created Lord Selsey in 1794. He married Lady Caroline Scott, 
daughter of Lord Deloraine, and granddaughter of the Duke of Mon- 
mouth — of course Lord Dalkeith's cousin. 

f Lady Frances Scott. — Ed. 



( 42 ) 

but faintly ; when it widens to the great-grandchildren 
it vanishes wholly away. John Duke of Argyll is no 
more to you than his ancestor the Marquis ; Lady 
Greenwich herself very little ; yet she, and even her 
sisters, had so much to do with a subject in which you 
take the deepest interest, that their characters must be 
developed in order to render this well understood. 
Setting her aside for certain reasons, let me give you an 
idea of the other three. 

Lady Strafford was held strikingly like her father, 
must have been beautiful when young, and when old 
retained uncommon sweetness of countenance. To 
quote Horace Walpole's early description of her in his 
* Advice to a Painter :' — 

" The crescent on her hrow displayed 
In curls of loveliest brown inlaid, 
"With every charm to rule the night, 
Like Dian, Strafford wooes the sight. 
The easy shape, the piercing eye, 
The snowy bosom's purity ; 
The unaffected gentle phrase 
Of native wit in all she says : 
Eckhardt, for these thy art 's too faint, 
You may admire, but cannot paint." 

Whether the " native wit " was truth or compliment, 
may be doubted. Physical causes prematurely weak- 
ened her understanding ; but I should suppose it could 
never have ranked above the mediocre, or what the men 
mean when they say (rather saucily) " Such a one has 
" sense enough for a pretty woman." Although ha- 
bitually led by her sisters to inveigh, as they did, 
against all present fashions, she had neither spleen nor 



( 43 ) 

bitterness in her own nature; nor was there much 
resemblance between her and them except in a loud, 
shrill voice common to the four, which gained them a 
variety of nicknames, such as the Screaming Sister- 
hood, the Bawling Campbells, and so forth, and made 
Lord Strafford, who was not without humour, say, slyly, 
" I can always tell whether any of my ladies are in a 
" house by the time I set my foot in the porter's hall." 

Notwithstanding this voice, she had a mild, gentle 
temper; and having been married out of the nursery, 
and never in her life accustomed to act or think for 
herself, she was very like an amiable child, looking up 
to its governor with great respect but some portion 
of fear, while the said governor, alias husband, though 
extremely fond of her, held the reins of authority tight, 
and would be obeyed. When I knew her, she loved 
company and diversions as well as any girl of eighteen, 
and brooked as ill the restraints imposed by his lord- 
ship, who (long since tired of them himself) often 
forbade her going into crowds, always insisted upon her 
coming home at an early hour, and (worst of all) 
usually carried her off to Yorkshire a month sooner 
than anybody else left town. He was of a selfish 
temper, yet in this (to give him his due) he chiefly con- 
sulted her welfare ; for she had that terrible infirmity, 
the falling sickness, with such an unconsciousness of it, 
that she would say carelessly, " The little faintings I am 
subject to now and then." Never did I behold my 
mother so shocked and unhinged as at her return 
from a card-party, where she had witnessed one of these 



( 44 ) 

little faintings : in reality, a succession of the most 
frightful convulsions, which came on suddenly, and 
lasted above an hour. The moment assistance was 
summoned, Lady Strafford's footmen ran in to hold her, 
a task far beyond women's strength ; and they told the 
company that they had their lord's strict orders never 
to quit any place where she was, but always to wait 
below stairs unknown to her, in case their help should 
be wanted. The next morning we had scarcely break- 
fasted when Lord Strafford arrived. I left the room, 
and he opened his heart fully to my mother, for whom 
he had ever a particular respect. 

" I am aware (said he) how churlish and tyrannical 
" Lady Strafford's sisters think me for thwarting her 
" inclinations as much as I am forced to do. You know 
" those ladies : they are not convinceable people ; if 
" they once take a notion in their heads, no human 
" power can beat it out again ; so I cut the matter short, 
" am peremptory, and let them rail at me as loudly as 
" they please. But now, when you have seen with 
" your own eyes what her malady is, can you wonder I 
" wish to hinder its being perpetually exposed to the 
" world ? She never goes to a public place, but I pass 
" the evening in misery, dreading what may have hap- 
" pened. Hot rooms, noise, bustle, and even the hurry 
" of spirits produced by pleasure, have an evident 
" tendency to bring on these attacks, which are fast 
" undermining her constitution. While she leads a 
" quiet life in the country, keeping good hours, and 
" breathing pure air, they occur comparatively seldom. 



( 45 ) 

" Am I, then, to blame for shortening her stay here as 
" much as I possibly can ? " 

Thus far he defended himself well; but he should 
also have considered the necessity of rendering retire- 
ment pleasant to a woman of an uncultivated, vacant 
mind, unused to reading, and soon tired of working 
cross-stitch in spectacles. At this time their intimates 
were mostly dead or dispersed; they had few neigh- 
bours, fewer visitors; he was too stiff to make new 
acquaintances ; he hated humble companions ; and, in 
short, Wentworth Castle became a magnificent her- 
mitage, where the Mackenzies and other relations, who 
sometimes called in their way to or from the farther 
North, rarely staid above four -and -twenty hours. 
Lady Mary Coke, indeed, had been in the habit of 
paying it longer visits; but latterly her domineering 
spirit, and his love of his own way, increased in such 
happy proportion that, after one stormy encounter, he 
made a private vow she should never invade him again. 
And poor Lady Strafford, who lived in constant appre- 
hension of their quarrelling outright, and whom Lady 
Mary had once or twice scolded into fits, honestly owned 
she did not regret his determination. That sister was 
beyond control ; the others stood in too much awe of 
him to take liberties, being warded off by a formal 
civility, an array of bows and ladyships, which nothing 
less than prowess like hers could attempt to break 
through. 

Lady Strafford delighted in animals of every sort 
and species ; had favourite horses, dogs, cats, squirrels, 



( 46 ) 

parroquets, and singing-birds. Nay, I remember to 
this hour the pleasure it gave me, when a child, to see 
a couple of tame green lizards, which she kept in a box, 
let loose to sport and catch flies in the sunshine. She 
was also passionately fond of children, courting all 
young mothers to bring her their babies, and even their 
schoolboys and girls. Indeed, she would have lived 
surrounded by young people, if her lord had indulged 
her taste as freely in this respect as in the other. But 
he protected the brute creation himself, and shrank 
from the two-legged ungovernables likely to throw his 
house out of the windows. The truth was this : both 
of them bitterly deplored their ill-fate in being child- 
less ; both (she more especially) felt the want of objects 
deeply interesting the heart. But, as lesser motives 
of regret will often mingle with greater, the feeling 
operated differently upon the man who had longed for 
heirs and the woman who pined for playthings. Be- 
sides, the most complying, most tractable young folks 
on earth must have put him, more or less, out of his 
way — that same way which is ever the first of all con- 
siderations with the selfish. 

Poor man ! he suffered severely for having clung to 
it ; and, through his dislike to admit any third person 
as a permanent inmate, forgot how dangerous it was for 
Lady Strafford ever to be left a single instant quite alone. 
The servants, on opening her dressing-room door, one 
winter's day, discovered her lying senseless against the 
grate, too much burned for recovery, although she 
lingered near a week in existence. This manner of 



( 47 ) 

dying was shocking ; the event itself not to be regretted 
as her intellects were already impaired by the epileptic 
disease, and she would probably have become utterly 
imbecile had she lived a very little longer. 

To poor Lord Strafford, however, it was check-mate 
— the loss of his all. It left him alone in the wide 
world ; nor do I believe he ever enjoyed another moment 
of comfort during the few years he survived her. But 
not even his real, deep, and hopeless sorrow could awe 
the indefatigable spirit of gossiping, or prevent it from 
finding him a second wife in six months' time ; and of 
all the birds in the air, and all the fishes in the water, 
whom should it think fit to bestow upon him but — 
Myself!!! Our approaching nuptials were announced 
in every newspaper. Having always looked on him as 
an old uncle, I should as soon have expected that the 
world would marry me to Mr. Mackenzie, if Lady 
Betty had been the person deceased. Therefore, it 
was impossible to forbear laughing, in spite of my 
concern for his misfortune ; and when the return of 
winter brought him to London, I am afraid he made 
me laugh still more; for no man of five and twenty 
could have seemed more fearful of confirming the 
report by being seen to speak to me or look at me. I 
tell you this nonsensical story chiefly for the sake of an 
admirable bon mot (tant soit pent Ubertiri), which it drew 
from Lady Dye Beauclerk, who knew nothing of either, 
except our ages. " Soh ! " said she to Mrs. Herbert, 
" your friend Lady L. S. is going to marry her great- 
" grandfather, is she ? If she can hold her nose, and 



( 48 ) 

" swallow the dose at once, it may do very well. But 
" most people would be apt to take a little sweetmeat in 
" their mouths aftemvards" 



Lady Betty Mackenzie's figure, though always too 
thin, passed for fine in her youth ; her face was even then 
plain, but not yet seamed and disfigured as we saw it by 
the confluent small-pox. The older she grew, the stronger 
those who had known her mother thought the resem- 
blance between them in features, manner, and mind. 
Like the Duchess, she was honest, upright, well-mean- 
ing, good-natured ; like her, ill-bred, positive, and any- 
thing but wise. She did not, however, inherit her 
Grace's insensibitity : there they were very dissimilar; 
for Lady Betty had a warm heart, and most assuredly 
the power of loving. I defy a more devoted attachment 
to exist than she had to my uncle ; and being love of 
the genuine, sterling kind (marked by a sincere prefer- 
ence of another to self), which always ennobles the 
character, it raised her above the folly of hers where- 
ever he was concerned. Her constant attention to his 
wishes, and visible delight in his presence, were not 
debased by any silly fondnesses unbecoming their age. 
If, through youthful flippancy, one sometimes simpered 
at the looks of affection exchanged between the ugly, 
wayward old woman and the good man in a bob-wig, 
one's heart presently smote one ; since, in sober earnest, 
one could not but allow that their steady, cordial, 



( 4 9 ) 

perfect union was a sight beautiful to behold. Origi- 
nally, as I have heard, the love began on her side. 
He could have rested in cousinly — or brotherly — regard 
and esteem for ever, had not her fervent passion at 
length attracted his notice, and won a grateful return. 
When people marry on these terms, the wife is sure to 
be very humble, very submissive ; and so was Lady 
Betty for several years, knowing no will but his: an 
order of things that had changed before my time. His 
easiness leaving most matters to her guidance, she 
ended by having all that influence which, in the long 
run, foolish women seldom fail to acquire (the Lord 
knows how) over sensible husbands. 

With respect to Mr. Mackenzie, I came in at the 
fifth act of the play, as he must have been near fifty 
when I first remember him. But, by all accounts, I 
should have seen him much the same man five-and- 
twenty years earlier. The principal change was what 
time often effects : a temper once impetuous had sub- 
sided into calmness, and left him the best-humoured 
mortal alive — always in good spirits, always happy, 
fond of society, and from his lively, amusing conversa- 
tion formed to delight it ; yet with pursuits in mathe- 
matics, astronomy, and all the exact sciences (to say 
nothing of a close attention to business), which occu- 
pied his mind pleasantly when he was alone. Such as 
I describe him, you may suppose he could make him- 
self very agreeable to the young : only with us, his 
relations, he had a trick teazing to all except absolute 
simpletons. You never grew up for him : at eighteen, 



( 50 ) 

you were five years old; at thirty — nay, forty — not 
above twelve ; assailed with jokes and nursery-stories, 
" enough," as Miss Hoyden says in the play, " to make 
one ashamed before one's love." Girl or woman, you 

found this annoying ; but for men ! I have seen 

my elder brothers ready to knock him down. 

At the same time, he felt little indulgence for 
youthful follies — apparently because his own nature 
was too placid and steady ever to have known the force 
of strong temptation, his blood too temperate to have 
ever boiled. He had been a man of gallantry, we were 
told ; and we could easily believe it. He had liked 
what is called flirting rather more than Lady Betty 
approved. This, too, was very credible; but in my 
life I never saw a person I should have pronounced so 
passionless. A sort of instinct would have made you 
refrain from giving way to the least enthusiasm in his 
presence; you would have forborne to speak before 
him of those emotions that convulse and tear the 
heart; you would scarcely have risked naming an un- 
fortunate attachment ; — not through your dread of his 
frowns and remonstrances, but for fear of being most 
goodhumouredly chucked under the chin. The con- 
clusion I draw is, that in this uncle of mine there had 
existed two separate, different men ; that one soul 
had at a certain moment quitted his frame, and an- 
other of quite distinct properties entered it, and taken 
peaceable possession. For surely there are extra- 
ordinary mental commotions which (once thoroughly 
experienced) do in general leave as indelible marks 



( 51 ) 

behind them as those violent bodily diseases which 
change the whole mass of our blood ; and it would not 
have been more astonishing to learn that a woman with 
the loveliest smoothness of complexion had had the 
same virulent small-pox as Lady Betty, than to hear — 
what was the fact — that Mr. Mackenzie's reason and his 
life were once upon the point of falling a sacrifice to the 
wildest and most romantic passion that ever agitated a 
human bosom. 

The object of it was the Barberini, a celebrated 
opera-dancer, known and admired throughout Europe, 
of decent manners and uncommon attractions, but in 
no part of the wicked world held more inflexibly cruel 
than other ladies of her profession. I cannot tell 
whether Mr. Mackenzie first saw her abroad, or in 
England, where she danced for one season. Wherever 
it was, he became her slave almost immediately, loving 
her, not as opera-dancers are usually loved, but 

" With that respect, that fearful homage paid her," 

which might have gratified an archduchess of Austria, 
and with a diffidence which made him tremble to pro- 
pose the only terms he believed it possible that purity 
like hers could listen to. For what was he ? — what 
had he to offer in rank, wealth, and situation worthy 
her acceptance ? How might he dare to indulge the 
presumptuous hope of gaining that interest in her 
heart which alone could tempt so exalted a being to 
bless him with her hand ? When, after a proper in- 
terval of difficulty and delay, the prospect of such 

e 2 



( 52 )' 

happiness did open upon him, his raptures were im- 
moderate. He announced his good fortune to my 
grandmother, Lady Mary Wortley, in a letter which 
she preserved, informing her that he had reason to 
think himself the most lucky of men : he was about to 
marry a woman whose preference did him the highest 
honour — one infinitely his superior in every particular 
excepting birth. What his family might say to it, he 
could not tell, and did not care ; he only knew they 
ought to be proud of the connection. But he really 
thought a man of his age was fully competent to judge 
for himself, and provide for his own happiness. To the 
last sentence, Lady Mary affixed this pithy marginal 
note, " The poor boy is about nineteen." 
• On these occasions relations and guardians are sad 
troublesome people. My uncle's uncle, Archibald Duke 
of Argyll, such another cool, considerate person as his 
future self, instead of feeling due pride in the connec- 
tion, or leaving " a man of his age " to secure his own 
happiness, officiously took measures to disturb it. 
Though the lovers were to be united* far off, at Venice, 
where they hoped they might defy his authority, yet, 
having long hands, and putting many irons in the fire, 
he discovered that before the lady formed her present 
plans of aggrandisement, she had signed articles bind- 
ing herself to dance that winter at the Berlin theatre. 
This being ascertained, his friend Lord Hyndford, then 
our ambassador in Prussia, easily induced that Court to 
demand of the Venetian Government that she should 
be compelled to fulfil her engagement. Accordingly 



( 53 ) 

she was arrested by order of the Senate, and, on the 
very day fixed for her marriage, sent off under a guard 
to Germany. 

Mr. Mackenzie had made a friendship in Italy with a 
very worthy Catholic abbe, an Italianised Scotchman, 
named Grant, eight or ten years elder than himself. 
This Abbe Grant, when an old man, came over to 
England to visit him and my father, and stayed near a 
month at Luton Park, where some of us found great 
amusement in putting him on the chapter of events 
long past, and getting at the particulars of the Bar- 
berini story. He was at Venice when the thing hap- 
pened, and was sent for by Mr. Mackenzie's servants, 
who did not know what to do with their master. He 
sat up with him all night, expecting every moment to 
see him breathe his last ; for he was quite delirious, 
and fell from one convulsion fit into another. The abb^ 
declared he never beheld a scene so distressing: the 
poor young man's throes of anguish, his state of distrac- 
tion and despair, excited in him such a degree of com- 
passion that he owned he could not have withheld from 
him the object of his wishes if he had had the power of 
restoring her, notwithstanding the disgrace and ruin 
which he, as well as Mr. Mackenzie's other friends, 
thought inseparable from the marriage. 

As soon as the lover regained his self-possession, he 
followed his captive mistress to Berlin ; but Lord 
Hyndford, aware that this might be the case, had pre- 
pared matters for his reception. On alighting from his 
carriage, he was saluted with a peremptory order to 



( 54 ) 

quit the King of Prussia's dominions in four-and-twenty 
hours; and a file of unpitying grenadiers forthwith 
escorted him beyond the frontier. Thence he sent a 
challenge to the ambassador ; who laughed, and put it 
in the fire. He vowed eternal enmity to the Duke of 
Argyll, he renounced all friendship and kindred with 
my father — in a word, he committed every extravagance 
which love and rage could dictate, till the conflicts of 
his mind overpowering his bodily strength, threw him 
into a dangerous fever. When, by the aid of youth 
and a good constitution, he had struggled through it, 
the news that awaited him on his recovery probably 
caused that kind of revulsion which paralytic patients 
feel when a torpid limb (or frame) is restored to action 
by the galvanic battery. The Barberini was married 
to another ! An artful adventurer, conceiving her to 
be rich, had passed himself upon her for a foreign 
nobleman of high rank, as desperately enamoured as 
the young Englishman, who now seemed "a bird 
escaped from the snare of the fowler," considerably 
richer, and with no relations entitled to control him. 
Duped into eagerness, she made haste to secure the 
prize. 

Thus ended an adventure which yet was not the most 
remarkable part of her history. She certainly must 
have had extraordinary abilities ; since she drew within 
the attraction of her sphere something as opposite to an 
inexperienced youth as it is possible to imagine — no 
less a person than Frederick the Great himself, of all 
men the least likely to be fascinated by female charms. 



( 55 ) 

Nor did he admire or pursue her as a woman. Jealous 
of being suspected of such a weakness, he took care 
always to have eye-witnesses of their interviews. But 
he was avowedly very fond of her conversation : a far 
prouder distinction, and one that, perhaps, no other of 
the sex ever could boast. She availed herself of his 
favour to some purpose, when she found she had been 
entrapped into becoming the wife of a needy impostor. 
On her representing to him what were the circum- 
stances of her marriage, his Majesty stretched forth his 
iron sceptre, supreme over law and gospel, to annul it 
as fraudulent, banished the sharper, and soon after 
made (or at least sanctioned) a match for her with 
a subject of his own, a gentleman by birth. As a 
Prussian lady she passed the rest of her life in good 
repute and comfort. 

It happened one day at our King's levee that a young 
man just arrived from abroad accosted Mr. Mackenzie 
rather pertly in my brother James's hearing, and told 
him he had lately seen an old friend of his, Madame la 

Baronne , naming this very Prussian lady. My uncle 

for a minute looked confounded; but, recovering him- 
self, drew the traveller into a corner, and held with 
him a long and earnest conversation, seeming to ask 
him many questions. But for this incident I should 
have supposed he remembered no more of the affair 
than of any pain or pleasure he had felt in his nurse's 
arms. I am sure no recollection of it ever appeared to 
flash across his mind while he was wondering at the 
indiscretions of his neighbours. 



( 56 ) 

At the time I knew theni, perhaps neither he nor 
Lady Betty could be deemed void of selfishness. It is 
the vice (alas !) of age, and also that of prosperity ; and 
their prosperity had been uninterrupted, for they pos- 
sessed all the good things of this world, and one might 
say, in the words of the Psalmist, that, excepting the 
loss of two infant children (long since forgotten), "no 
evil had come nigh their dwelling." As her sway over 
him was unbounded, and he, again, had great influence 
on my father, she sometimes made a good deal of mis- 
chief in our family — not by design, but need I tell you 
in how many ways want of sense can answer that pur- 
pose equally with injurious intentions? Capricious as 
the wind, or the weathercock it turns, and subject to 
those w r himsical fits of fondness or aversion called in 
French engouemens (for which I know no precise Eng- 
lish word), she had, even in the passing crowd un- 
known to her, her charming favourite and her odious 
anti-favourite of the season, like her summer and 
winter gowns ; while among ourselves there was always 
some one who could do nothing wrong, and some one 
other who could do nothing right. The same individual 
often acted both parts in the course of half a year — 
suddenly metamorphosed from white to black: if a 
woman, for wearing a feather or a riband she disliked ; 
if a man, for something of corresponding importance. 
I myself usually stood high in her favour, but I had a 
long interval of grievous disgrace on the score of a 
new-fashioned trimming, y'clept by the milliners frivo- 
Ute. Still, bitter as she would be against the present 



( 57 ) 

offender, we were more inclined to laugh at these fluc- 
tuations than to resent them. Those less used to her 
could not so well tolerate the peremptory tone she was 
apt to assume in all places and companies, from meet- 
ing with no contradiction at home, and having else- 
where that species of consideration which is acquired 
by giving excellent dinners. Mrs. Anne Pitt, Lord 
Chatham's sister and counterpart, who continually met 
her at our house, being my mother's intimate friend, 
said, in her pointed, peculiar manner : " Lady Betty 
" takes the liberty in society of telling one that — one 
" lies, and that — one is a fool ; and I cannot say I 
" think it at all agreeable." 



We now come to that extraordinary person Lady 
Mary Coke, a study for the observers of human cha- 
racter as a rare plant or animal would be for the natu- 
ralist. Her beauty had not been undisputed, like Lady 
Strafford's. Some allowed, some denied it ; the dis- 
senters declaring her neither more nor less than a 
white cat — a creature to which her dead whiteness of 
skin, unshaded by eyebrows, and the fierceness of her 
eyes, did give her a great resemblance. To make 
amends, there were fine teeth, an agreeable smile, a 
handsome neck, well-shapen hands and arms, and a 
majestic figure. She had the reputation of cleverness 
when young, and, in spite of all her absurdity, could 
not be called a silly woman ; but she was so invincibly 



( 58 ) 

wrong-headed — her understanding lay smothered under 
so much pride, self-conceit, prejudice, obstinacy, and 
violence of temper, that you knew not where to look 
for it, and seldom indeed did you catch such a distinct 
view of it as certified its existence. So also her good 
qualities were seen only like the stars that glimmer 
through shifting clouds on a tempestuous night; yet 
she really had several. Her principles were religious. 
She was sincere, honourable, good-natured where passion 
did not interfere, charitable, and (before old age had 
sharpened economy into avarice) sometimes generous. 
For her friendships, they were only too warm and too 
zealous for the peace of the mortals upon whom they 
were bestowed — I am afraid I might say jnfiicted. 

In information she greatly surpassed her sisters, 
having a turn for reading, and reading of a solid kind — 
history and State-papers, in which she was well versed, 
as far, at least, as related to England. But she had not 
a grain of taste for any work of genius. She esteemed 
Milton and Pope very fine poets, because such was the 
creed of her youth; but if their verses had been 
printed pell-mell with Blackmore's, she would not have 
found out which was which. Nor did she discriminate 
better in prose : a writer's style, his reasoning, and 
reflections she scarcely attended to; the language of 
Swift and Kapin, Burnet and Burke, went down alike ; 
and the Parliamentary Journals pleased her above them 
all, as most authentic. Thus conversant with the 
dryest matter of fact alone, she contrived to apply it to 
the increase of her own self-importance, and heated 



( 59 ) 

her brains with history as others have done with 
romances. Don Qnixote became a knight-errant by 
poring over 'Amadis de Gaul ;' Lady Mary, an his- 
torical personage by studying * Kush worth's Collections ' 
and Lord Strafford's trial. I verily believe that if she 
could have been committed a close prisoner to the 
Tower on a charge of High Treason, examined before 
the Privy Council, tried, and of course gloriously 
acquitted, by the House of Lords, it would have given 
her more delight than any other thing physically 
possible. But living in an age when all this was little 
less than morally impossible, she had no way of getting 
upon a level with the Queen Marys and the Lady Jane 
Greys who were always running in her head, except by 
striving to magnify every common matter that con- 
cerned herself, like the Don when he turned windmills 
into giants, and carriers' inns into castles. Nothing 
ever happened to her after the fashion of ordinary life. 
Not to mention the unprecedented behaviour of most 
men, women, and children whom she had anything to 
do with, she could not be caught in a shower but it was 
such rain as never before fell from the skies. The dry- 
rot that broke out in her house was totally different in 
its nature from the dry-rot at her next neighbour's; 
and in case of a cold or a sore-throat, woe to the 
apothecary who ventured to quicken her pulse and 
excite her ire by tendering that established consolation, 
" It is going about, madam, I assure you ; I suppose I 
" have now twenty patients with just the same symp- 
" toms as your ladyship's ;" — for all her disorders were 



( 60 ) 

something nobody else could judge of, or had ever 
experienced. I once heard her literally talk of the 
exquisite pain she suffered from pricking her finger. 

Cervantes, we know, designed to give his hero a 
taint of real madness, which he represents as at one 
time on the point of being subdued by judicious medical 
treatment. Here the parallel will fail us. However a 
stranger might have construed some of Lady Mary's 
visions, she had no insane tendency — not so much as 
what is familiarly termed a twist. Her delusions were 
altogether wilful, springing from a noble disdain of 
being nothing more than simply and barely the person 
she was. Therefore, all the bleeding and blistering 
imaginable would not have put one of them to flight, 
nor lowered the distressed princess, the persecuted 
heroine, into a reasonable woman, of high quality, rich 
and surrounded with advantages, but debarred from the 
cognisance of State affairs — in the first place, by her 
sex ; in the second by want of power to influence a 
cobbler's vote at a Westminster election. So much for 
the portrait. It is time to put the original in action. 

Lady Mary's marriage was an affair conducted in the 
old-fashioned manner ; overtures being made by Lord 
Coke's relations to hers, terms proposed and rejected, 
others acceded to, and the bargain finally struck for 
two thousand five hundred pounds per annum jointure 
and five hundred pin-money, as the fair equivalent for 
her twenty thousand pounds, which at that time was a 
larger portion than could often be met with out of the 
City. Still the Duchess of Argyll demurred in per- 



( 6J ) 

plexity, averse from the connection on account of Lord 
Leicester's notoriously dissolute and violent character. 
Yet the son, though faithfully following his father's 
footsteps, won her good graces. But this is a matter 
that a young man may always manage with an old 
woman, even of a wiser class. Then officious friends 
brought her favourable reports of him — another thing 
sure to happen ; he had sense, he had good-nature, he 
had this, and that, which, when his wild-oats were sown, 
a prudent woman — according to custom again — might 
work upon and do wonders. To conclude, Lady Mary, 
who at nineteen had a very positive will of her own, 
intimated that she liked and chose to accept him. 
Yet no sooner were the conveyancers set to work, and 
the suitor's visits freely admitted, than she gave all 
outward and visible signs of a coyness approaching to 
aversion. He dutifully attended her mother's tea-table, 
stroked her Grace's cats, listened to her long stories, 
talked goodness and morality, and kept his counte- 
nance admirably throughout ; every now and then 
lowering his voice to its softest tone, and tenderly 
addressing the lady of his love : while she, bridling 
with ineffable disdain, turned away her head, and 
hardly vouchsafed him an answer. Those who knew 
the Celadon could read in his face a humorous enjoy- 
ment of the scene, but yet foresee that her airs of scorn 
would not go unpunished — for he was inwardly as 
haughty as herself, thoroughly unprincipled and profli- 
gate, had abundance of wit and humour, and not the 
smallest personal liking for her to counterbalance the 



( 62 ) 

secret resentment which such contemptuous usage in- 
spired. 

As the lawyers' labours advanced and the day of 
execution drew near, her dislike to him seemed to in- 
crease ; she wept all the morning above stairs, and in 
the evening sat below stairs, the silent picture of de- 
spair. "Then, for the love of Heaven," said honest 
Lady Betty, " my dear sister, why don't you break off 
" the match? — where is the difficulty ?" It was a jest, 
as Lady Betty well knew, to suppose Lady Mary afraid 
of her mother; but, granting she were so, she (Lady 
Betty) offered again and again to save her every dis- 
cussion — to acquaint the Duchess, dismiss Lord Coke, 
take all the embarrassing part of the business upon 
herself. " No," replied Lady Mary, as often as this was 
urged, " no — it will be time enough at the altar." To 
the altar then she went (in April, 1747), and there, in- 
stead of an effectual " No," Catherine uttered the irre- 
vocable "Yes," gave Petruchio her hand, and sub- 
mitted to be sacrificed. But — but — a circumstance 
awkward to hint at is, as you will find, the main hinge 
of the story. But rumour whispered that the sacrifice 
remained incomplete. To speak out, the bridegroom, 
who conceived he had a long score of insolence to pay 
off, and was predetermined to mortify the fair bride by 
every means in his power, did not scruple entertaining 
his bottle-companions with a ludicrous detail of particu- 
lars. He found her ladyship, he said, in the mood of 
King Solomon's Egyptian captive, — 

" darting scorn and sorrow from her eyes ; " 



( 63 ) 

prepared to become the wretched victim of abhorred 
compulsion. Therefore, coolly assuring her she was 
quite mistaken in apprehending any violence from him, 
he begged she would make herself easy, and wished her 
a very good night. 

The happy pair went on thenceforward in a -way 
suited to this promising outset. He almost immediately 
resumed his former habits of gaming and drinking, and 
when they were alone together gave her pretty coarse 
language, although before company it was, " My love ! 
" My life ! My angel ! " — acting the fondest of husbands. 
More in mockery than hypocrisy, however; since he 
lost no opportunity of attacking her father's memory, 
ridiculing her mother, [disparaging the name of Camp- 
bell, and slyly throwing out whatever else could irritate 
her most. You will inquire how she bore such treat- 
ment. Why, her lawyers answer the question, for they 
set forth "that she ever comported herself in a cour- 
" teous and obliging manner ; she, the said Lady Mary, 
" being of a sober, modest, chaste, and virtuous con- 
" versation, and of a meek, mild, and affable temper 
" and disposition ;" which perforce reminds one of the 
meek spirit ascribed to Humphrey Hoen's wife (Sarah 
Duchess of Marlborough) in Arbuthnot's ' History of 
John Bull.' But we must remember that the said 
Lady Mary's teeth and claws were not yet fully grown ; 
besides, people who, like her, fairly love a grievance, 
always support real evils better than those fabricated 
by their own imagination. As heroic sufferers they are 
in their proper element; it is exactly the character 



( 64 ) 

they aspire to exhibit, and it inspires them with a sort 
of self-satisfaction calculated to produce apparent 
equanimity. 

Three- months after their marriage, the young couple 
accompanied Lord and Lady Leicester to Holkham for 
the summer; and, as all the family travelled together, 
it brought about a discovery. When the Leicester 
coach-and-six stopped at Lord Coke's door early in the 
morning, Lady Mary was dressed and ready, his lord- 
ship not yet returned from the tavern. Finding, upon 
inquiry, that such were his customary hours and 
practices, his father expressed the most indignant dis- 
pleasure that so fine a young woman should be so 
shamefully neglected, and took her part in the warmest 
manner. This, by the bye, never does a wife much 
service. No third person can step in between a married 
couple without the risques attending those who handle 
gunpowder ; but perhaps it would be safer for the lady 
to have any other advocate than one of whom her 
husband stands in awe, whether it be father, master, or 
prince ; above all, the first, whose pre-eminence is most 
indisputable, and who cannot be asked that stout ques- 
tion, available against everybody else, namely, " What 
" have you to do in my house, and with my subject ? " 
It puts the son in a humiliating predicament, sending 
him back to the days of his boyhood ; and though he 
may submit to paramount authority, he bears her a 
grudge for having appealed to it, of which she is sure 
to rue the effects long after her momentary triumph 
has ceased. Thus it happened here. The Duchess of 



( 65 ) 

Argyll writes to Lady Dalkeith, that her sister Mary's 
letters from Norfolk speak highly of Lord and Lady 
Leicester's kindness to her, but say nothing of Lord 
Coke's. In fact, they were upon worse terms than ever. 
After their return to town, he scarcely kept any mea- 
sures with her ; and in consequence of their declared 
quarrel she received a most flattering letter from his 
father at the commencement of the new year, extolling 
her as an angel, and calling her husband " brute " and 
" beast " in express terms. The depraved wretch, who 
had proved himself unworthy of such a blessing as 
Heaven had granted him in her, should henceforth be 
renounced by him (Lord Leicester), and she regarded 
as his own beloved daughter married into another 
family. 

Upon the face of this epistle — which is long and 
elaborate, and was afterwards produced in proof of her 
ill-usage — I think you would have said, " the gentleman 
" doth protest too much ;" or have quoted the French 
proverb, Qui prouve trop ne prouve rien, for its exag- 
gerated language is very unlike that of a sincere person. 
In a short time she herself learned to mistrust it; his 
behaviour at their next interview being cold and con- 
strained, and his manner of listening to her complaints 
discouraging. A second letter soon followed, intimating 
that he found Lord Coke so truly penitent, so convinced- 
of her merit, and desirous of regaining her affections, 
that, if she would but agree to a reconciliation, he was 
persuaded they might still live happily together. Her 
papers do not show how she replied ; it only appears 



( 66 ) 

that one day Lord Leicester unexpectedly arrived in a 
furious passion, turned some relations of his own who 
were sitting with her out of the house, railed at her 
pride and stubbornness, told her Lord Coke had done 
her the greatest honour in marrying her; in short, 
raved like a madman. She sent for her mother and 
Lady Strafford, to whom he was not much more civil ; 
and the former, she owns, made matters something 
worse by scolding him in return. 

What caused such a sudden change in Lord Leicester's 
sentiments and conduct, she professes herself unable to 
guess ; but I have heard it sufficiently explained. He 
was, in one sense, impartial, as he cared not a straw 
who was right or who was wrong : nor had he any very 
tender paternal feelings to blind him, knowing his son's 
faults full well ; but his heart was set upon having heirs 
to his title and estate. With a fair prospect of gaining 
this point, he would have protected his daughter-in-law, 
whether angel or devil, and supported her against her 
husband to the utmost of his power; and the indigna- 
tion he expressed at Lord Coke's neglect of her and 
abandoned life was but what he really felt as long as 
these seemed the sole or chief obstacles in the way. 
But now the case was altered. 

" As women wish to be who love their lords," 

the woman did not wish to be who hated her lord. It 
is possible that, knowing how important the object was 
to the family, she might take a perverse pleasure in 
disappointing them ; and far from improbable that she 



( 67 ) 

might be partly actuated by pique at the affront origi- 
nally offered to her personal charms, upon which no 
poor little, frivolous, weak woman of us all could 
secretly set a higher value. Her motives, however, 
were best known to herself : the magnanimous vow she 
made and proclaimed was, never to cohabit as a wife 
with Lord Coke; and she adhered to it with all her 
characteristic obstinacy. The moment his father under- 
stood this, it converted him into her determined enemy. 
Making light of directly contradicting his former pro- 
fessions (as indeed he had little reputation for honour or 
consistency to forfeit), he gave a loose to the brutality 
of his nature without reserve. 

Nevertheless, through Archibald Duke of Argyll's 
mediation, a kind of truce was made. Lady Mary, 
being much indisposed, had permission to live two or 
three months at her mother's house in Bruton Street ; 
while Lord Coke, who was also ill, resided with his 
parents. But he often called to inquire after the health 
of his beloved spouse, and never once gained admit- 
tance, although she received other visitors ; in excuse 
for which she pleaded that her nerves were too weak to 
bear the agitation that an interview with him would 
have caused. Meantime, her uncle pressed Lord 
Leicester to let the ill-matched pair be formally separ- 
ated ; but his arguments and persuasions had no effect : 
neither father nor son would hear of it ; and all he 
could obtain was, that both should give him (the Duke) 
their words of honour to treat her more kindly in 
future. 

F 2 



( 68 ) 

The husband and wife, once more re-united, then went 
to drink a mineral water at Sunninghill, and with them 
her unmarried sister Lady Betty, whose presence proved 
no check to their quarrels nor restraint upon Lord 
Coke's violence. Throwing the mask and the scabbard 
aside together, he told Lady Mary it was his resolution 
to make her as miserable as he could, and he should 
take her to Holkham for that express purpose. She 
answered that she would not go, unless carried by force. 
Yet go she did ; and from that moment the feud was 
regularly established, and the war of tongues kindled ; 
the families, as well as the individuals, abusing each 
other to the right and left: that is to say, widening 
the breach every hour, — in this instance without doing 
much harm, for the animosity of the principals could 
not be increased. But how often does it occur that 
some small grain of kindness, some remnant of affec- 
tion, still lies lurking in the bosoms of a couple, whose 
passions, flaming above their reason, have set them at 
variance ! And then how fatal a step it is to call in even 
the best-meaning friends as auxiliaries ! 

Hitherto we have hardly named Lady Leicester, — a 
peaceable, inoffensive woman, long inured to obedience ; 
who, as the father was yet more ill-tempered than the 
son, and addicted to the same vices, had borne sub- 
missively for thirty years the trials that exhausted 
Lady Mary's scantier stock of patience in three months. 
Her Lord did not fail to point out the contrast to 
others, and ask, exultingly, whether a daughter of the 
House of Thanet, inheriting in her own right one of our 



( 69 ) 

oldest English * baronies, would not have been quite 
as well entitled to rebel and give herself airs as the 
Infanta he now had to deal with ? Quiet as she was, 
her daughter-in-law, treating her as a foe, in some 
measure made her one. It could not be expected that 
she should side with her against a son, her only child. 
Nor was she wholly inexcusable if she thought (even 
taking his character at the worst) that a wife of gentler 
mood might have had a fairer chance of reforming him. 
However, continuing passive as she had always been, 
she neither prompted nor opposed the decision of the 
higher powers. 

On Lady Mary's arrival in Norfolk, where she was 
doomed to remain upwards of a twelvemonth, the affair 
might be considered at issue : the parties fell to work 
in earnest. Lord Leicester and Lord Coke firmly 
determined to master her refractory spirit; her lady- 
ship equally resolute not to be overcome. First, they 
skirmished with her, saying and doing whatever was 
most slighting and contemptuous, and letting all their 
dependants perceive that the fewer marks of respect 
they showed her the better they would pay their court. 
This produced bitter resentment, but no humility ; she 
was not to be mortified into surrendering at discre- 
tion. She retreated to the citadel of her own apart- 
ment, and declared herself too ill to leave it ; which the 
Leicesters, discrediting, regarded as a pretext adopted 
to cast odium upon them and excite compassion in the 

* The barony of De Clifford. 



( 70 ) 

neighbourhood. I own I have heard old Lady Cecilia 
Johnstone say, that when she and her sister Lady 
Diana Clavering (then young ladies) were at Holkham, 
with their father Lord Delawar, Lady Mary used to 
invite them up to her room, and be very merry, and, to 
all appearance, very well, though muffled in a night 
cap and sick dress, and refusing to associate with the 
family. For some months she persisted in thus se- 
cluding herself; nor could the medical men she consulted 
ever prevail upon her to stir out of doors or breathe the 
fresh air, — a way of life which, together with fretting 
and vexation, brought on real nervous disorders. But 
her antagonists believing, or choosing to believe, all her 
complaints affected, proceeded to turn this voluntary 
confinement into downright compulsory durance. They 
demanded her keys, seized her papers, and opened the 
letters she wrote and received ; previously taking the 
opinion of counsel how far they might legally go, and 
putting this query in particular, viz., " Whether a wife's 
" obstinately denying her husband his conjugal rights 
" did not justify his placing her under unusual re- 
" straint ? " Lord Leicester, in a letter written about 
this time to her sister Lady Betty, lays a great stress 
upon the same point, as " contrary to the laws of God 
" and man." And it was so publicly known and can- 
vassed, that it became a standing jest amongst his very 
servants to nickname her (prophanely enough) "our 
" Virgin Mary? 

Now began to peep forth and to be seen her pro- 
pensity to give things a high historical colouring. Her 



( 71 ) 

actual situation, with all the terrific power that a 
husband may exert by strictness of English law, about 
to thunder on her devoted head, was sufficiently 
grievous ; and no very common case either. Yet still 
it wanted a certain grandeur of peril, which her ima- 
gination sought to supply by stretching beyond the 
locking up and other severities threatened, and directing 
her apprehensions to assassination and poison. When 
I first commenced observing my fellow-creatures, Lady 
Mary's humour had long been so well understood that 
the dangers which perpetually menaced her life from 
one deadly enemy or another, were things of course 
that startled nobody. We were almost too much used 
to the fancy to laugh at it. But in these early days, 
before even her nearest friends had found her out (pardon 
the expression), they naturally imagined she could not 
admit such horrible suspicions upon any other than 
good grounds: therefore, the dreadful fate she had 
reason to fear was hinted, and whispered, and told in 
confidence; till the rumour, growing loud, reached 
the ears of the parties accused, whom it only served to 
exasperate and impel to acts more decidedly hostile. 
In March, 1749, Lord Coke absented himself, em- 
powering his father, by a letter of attorney to take 
certain strong measures, beforehand agreed upon be- 
tween them: to dismiss Lady Mary's maid without 
warning, place about her another of their own choice, 
remove her from the new house at Holkham into the 
adjoining old one, and strictly forbid the domestics to 
admit any of her relations who might attempt to visit 



( 72 ) 

her. That she was now in bad health and piti- 
able distress, is credibly testified; yet she continued 
fighting upon her stumps with all the bravery of 
Witherington. She would not let the new maid ap- 
proach her person. " Mighty well," said Lord Leicester, 
" then she may wait upon herself! " She refused pay- 
ing the apothecary's bill. It was well, his lordship 

said again ; as he knew her illness to be " all d d 

" affectation." If she did not choose to defray the 
expence of it out of her pin-money, she might do with- 
out doctors and physic; and he prohibited the man's 
farther attendance. 

In this state of persecution and imprisonment she 
lived five or six months; finding means, however, to 
correspond with her family all the while ; whether by 
the assistance of servants, or by that of the apothecary 
and the chaplain — whom compassion partly won over to 
her side — I am ignorant. By this time Lady Betty was 
married, and Lady Mary had acquired a zealous, active 
protector in Mr. Mackenzie, who consulted the best 
lawyers, transmitted her their advice, sent her queries 
to answer and papers to sign : in a word, took unre- 
mitting pains to effect her release. Not without diffi- 
culties to combat at home. It was his task to spur the 
Duchess of Argyll into action, and to hinder her acting 
foolishly : neither an easy matter. Nay, once — if not 
oftener — he encountered a sudden squall from that 
point of the compass whence it seemed least that 
any adverse wind should blow. Plainly speaking, the 
captive lady herself wrote him a furious letter, full of 



( 73 ) 

bitter reproaches, inclosing another to Lady Betty 
equally violent, and pretty nearly desiring him to 
meddle no more with her affairs. With great con- 
sistency, she next wondered he had not meddled much 
further; asking why he omitted doing this, or that, 
which she thought expedient? A proof that then, as 
well as ever after, she knew better what was to be 
done than all her friends and all the lawyers in West- 
minster Hall, Chancellor and Judges included. In my 
uncle's first amazement, he begins his answer with 
" Madam ;" but soon seems to soften towards her ; and 
afterwards, on her making him some little apology, 
assures her, with manly good nature, that his displea- 
sure had not lasted half-an-hour ; as he attributed all 
she had said to the irritating effects of misery upon her 
spirits. 

At length a decisive step was taken. The Duchess, 
attended by Mr. Mackenzie and a solicitor, went down 
to Holkham, demanded, before witnesses, to have access 
to her daughter, was refused it, made affidavit of the 
fact on her return to town, and obtained from the Judges 
of the King's Bench a writ of Habeas Corpus, injoining 
Lord Coke to produce his wife before them on the first 
day of Term in November. Lady Mary, when thus 
brought up, swore the peace against him, and instituted 
a suit for divorce on the score of cruel usage ; the Chief 
Justice declaring her to be under the protection of the 
Court in the interim, and ordering that her near rela- 
tions should have free admittance to her, together with 
her lawyers and physicians. 



( 74 ) 

I have often and often heard my mother describe the 
ceremony of Lady Mary's public appearance. The Court 
was crowded to excess, the Bench filled with ladies, for 
the Duchess and her daughters not only assembled 
those related to them, but engaged all the most re- 
spectable of their acquaintance to countenance her by 
attending. Her male kindred and friends assisted like- 
wise. On the other hand, Lord Leicester and his son, 
having no great interest with respectable women, 
gathered together a numerous posse of lively, clever, 
wild young men ; all the rakes and all the genius's of 
the age came to back Lord Coke, or rather to enjoy an 
exhibition in their eyes very diverting. Lady Mary's 
faction found it far otherwise; the poor old Duchess 
was crying bitterly, Lady Strafford repeatedly fainting 
away, and my mother said she never saw a more moving 
scene in any tragedy. If one durst form such a sur- 
mise, perhaps it distressed her and the rest of the troop 
more than it really did the chief actress ; for I cannot 
but suspect that there was something in the dignity and 
solemnity of the transaction wonderfully consonant to 
Lady Mary's inclinations. However, she came forth 
feeble, squalid, and in a wretched plight, dressed almost 
in tatters, which (by the way) the Leicesters maintained 
that it was her good pleasure to wear, since her pin- 
money had never been with-held, and she had spent it 
as she thought proper. I should wrong you greatly by 
omitting one incident. The mob, which was prodigious, 
pressing to gain a sight of her, broke the glass of her 
sedan-chair. " Take care ! " said the tender husband 



( 75 ) 

as he handed her out of it. " My dearest love ! Take 
care, and do not hurt yourself." 

While the suit was pending she resided in the garret of 
Lord Leicester's town-house, about which garret again 
were two stories. She affirmed that they would allot 
her no better apartment ; they, that she perversely pre- 
ferred it to any other, in order to appear cruelly used. 
Her friends daily clambered up to it, notwithstanding 
its inconvenient height, and my mother was present 
more than once when Mr. Mackenzie and the lawyers 
laboured to extort from her the information necessary 
to form the base of their proceedings — 

" labour dire it was, and weary woe." 

Keclining on a couch, Lady Mary returned this com- 
prehensive answer to all their interrogations : — " Never 
" was any human creature treated as I have been." 
" That we do not doubt, Madam ; but the law requires 
" of us proof. We must go upon specific grounds. Will 
" you please to enter into particulars ? " " It is enough 
** to say that in every respect my usage was most bar- 
" barous." " But how and in what precise respect ? 
" Cannot your Ladyship state some one act on some 
" one day ? " " Oh ! a thousand acts every day." And 
in this mode of answering she would persist, maugre 
argument and entreaty, till the learned gentlemen 
visibly gave some of Lady Townley's gulps to swallow 
wrong words ; and one may safely presume they said to 
each other, as they went down-stairs, "Well! If her 
husband did thresh her, he was not without excuse." 



( 76 ) 

But all she could bring forward in the article of 
battery was this, that once, in a violent passion, Lord 
Coke struck her on the arm, and tore her lace-ruffle. 
It was once too often, to be sure ; yet even among gen- 
tlemen and ladies, who certainly ought not to war with 
their fists, one blow can no more constitute inhuman 
usage than the one swallow of the proverb make a 
summer. In short, law, like arithmetic, passes assertion 
through so fine a sieve that a considerable portion of it 
is apt to stick by the way. And when you read poor 
Lady Mary's memorial, or, technically, libel, addressed 
to the Spiritual Court, you need be no deep civilian to 
perceive how little beside assertion it contains. As 
may be expected, it tells only her own story, and makes 
the most of that, leaving you quite convinced that she 
had the ill-luck (which betides many a woman) of what 
is vulgarly called catching a Tartar, or lighting upon a 
very bad husband. But neither bad husbands nor bad 
wives can be easily got rid of in our stiff strait-laced 
country, whose austere old statutes invest the former 
with an authority which Lord Coke had taken care not 
to overstep, save in a single instance, i.e. when he denied 
her mother the permission of seeing her. Had the 
doors been freely opened to the Duchess, they might 
have continued fast closed upon Lady Mary for ever. 

To prove her life endangered, the Libel states that 
Lord Leicester had talked of sending her to the Hun- 
dreds of Essex, or some place equally unwholesome. 
The law, fortunately for most of us, does not mind what 
nonsense people talk. Yet this formal legal document 



( 77 ) 

records other sayings which one is still more surprised 
to see there. For example, what, I suppose, Lady Mary 
herself held too heinous an offence to be omitted — that 
once upon a time, Lord Coke, finding her employed in 
reading Locke upon the Human Understanding, told 
her she could not understand a word of the book, and 

was an affected b h for her pains. Doubtless a most 

rude, affronting speech, and sorely grating to the ears 
of a wife (a wise woman, too !) ; but if the Judges pre- 
served their gravity on hearing it repeated, they did all 
that decency could demand of mortal men. Another 
time, it seems, Lord Leicester said she was a piece of 
useless lumber, fit only to be locked up in a garret, out 
of the way. Useless, you will observe, had a comical 
meaning, a sense in which it was true. And again the 
bench must have been tempted to smile. 

I am uncertain whether the cause ever came to a 
hearing, or was given up without one ; but it fell to the 
ground so completely as to leave Lady Mary at the 
mercy of her enemies; and she would have had no 
choice but to fly her country or return to her prison, 
if they themselves, satisfied with their victory, had 
not grown a little tired, perhaps a little ashamed, of 
persecuting her farther. Lord Hartington (in after days 
Duke of Devonshire), the friend of Lord and Lady 
Strafford, offered himself as mediator, and the Lei- 
cesters, by his persuasion, consented to let her live at 
Sudbrook unmolested ; upon condition that she should 
withdraw her suit, pay its expences herself, never set 
her foot in town, and have no separate maintenance but 



( 78 ) 

her pin-money. Hard terms, yet softened down from 
those stipulated at first ; which were, that she should on 
no pretence come within twenty miles of London, and 
should publicly give herself the lie, — that is to say, 
acknowledge, through her lawyers, in open court, that 
her complaints had been totally void of foundation. 

No Turkish Prince, yesterday living immured in the 
Seraglio, and to-day placed upon the Ottoman throne, 
ever experienced a more agreeable change of situation 
and prospects than Lady Mary, when Lord Coke's ex- 
cesses producing an early decay, brought him to the 
grave only three years after their separation. At six 
and twenty she emerged from a very dull retirement, a 
state of constant humiliation and fear, into the perfect 
freedom of an independant widow, with a jointure of 
twenty-five hundred pounds a-year, fully equivalent to 
what five thousand would be at present. Ke-entermg the 
world, too, with the advantage of its good opinion ; for 
she had been generally pitied, and everybody but a few 
friends of the Leicester family rejoiced at her deliver- 
ance. She conciliated farther good-will by her decent 
behaviour on the occasion ; not affecting a concern she 
could not feel, but wearing mourning, and abstaining 
from amusements for the usual space of time. 

When she left off her weeds the Duke of Argyll and 
Colonel Campbell, as I have heard, wished to bring- 
about a match between her and Young Jack, the latter's 
eldest son, who was passive, if not assenting. But she 
said she could not possibly marry a man whom she had 
always viewed as a brother. Indeed, her uncle's robust 



( 79 ) 

constitution set the dukedom and marquisate at such a 
distance from this young heir of the family that he had 
then nothing to tempt ambition, though perhaps every- 
thing to inspire love. Now Love was affirmed by Lady 
Temple — a very sensible woman, who knew Lady Mary 
well — to be " the only passion that had no place in her 
" composition." The same Lady Temple wrote a com- 
plimentary portrait of her as follows : — 

" She sometimes laughs, but never loud ; 
She's handsome, too, but somewhat proud : 
At court she bears away the bell, 
She dresses fine and figures well : 
With decency she's gay and airy ; 

Who can this be but Lady Mary." 

So dignified a person, though extremely willing to 
receive homage from admirers, held out no encourage- 
ment to the younger brothers, the inferior fortune-hunters, 
who pursue rich widows in serious earnest. They must 
have perceived that such an aim was hopeless; and I 
never heard that any adorers of a higher class laid 
titles and estates at her feet. If they had, it is not an 
utter impossibility that their offers might have been 
taken into consideration. At least, I know a story which 
seems to imply thus much; and as it is entertaining, 
and I can quote the best authority for it, chapter and 
verse, you shall have it at full length. By certain 
dates, I conjecture that at the time she must have stood 
upon the verge of thirty. 

The Duke and Duchess of Queensberry had two sons, 
both of whom lived to be men. The eldest, when tra- 
velling through Yorkshire with them and his new- 



( 80 ) 

married wife, rode onward, and either shot himself or 
was killed by his pistol going off, almost within view of 
their carriage. The second died of a consumption the 
following year. And thus the Duke's nearest collateral 
relation — Lord March (the Old Q., whom you remember,) 
— became his next heir. He was then the most brilliant, 
most fashionable, most dissipated young man in London, 
the leading character at Newmarket, the support of the 
gaming-table, the supreme dictator of the Opera-house, 
the pattern whose dress and equipage were to be copied 
by all who aimed at distinction, and (need we add ?) the 
person most universally admired by the ladies. Na- 
turally a male coquet, he made love to every pretty 
woman of his own class, and bought it ready-made (in 
Quin's* phrase) from every one of a lower who set it to 
sale. He would have been held a great matrimonial 
prize notwithstanding — as a duke's heir, with an earldom 
and a good estate in present — could any young lady 
have had reasonable hopes of winning him ; but prudent 
mammas, frightened, sought to keep their daughters 
aloof, and it was pretty plain that whoever dared the 
adventure must pursue it at her own peril. 

The Queensberrys, overwhelmed by the load of ca- 
lamity which thus fell suddenly upon them, had retired 
to Amesbury, and there lived a year or two secluded 
from the world, keeping up hardly any correspondance 

* Alluding to Quin's famous repartee when the Duchess of Queens- 
berry asked him, " Pray, Mr. Quin, do you ever make love ? " She 
meant upon the stage, where he commonly acted tyrants, villains, &c. ; 
but, giving her question a different turn, he answered, " No, Madam, I 
always buy it ready-made." 



( 81 ) 

with their friends. My mother was much surprised, 
therefore, when she received a letter from the duchess, 
to say that particular business calling them to town, 
they earnestly wished she would drink tea with them 
on the evening of their arrival. Of course she obeyed 
the summons, and the meeting passed as it usually does 
between people so circumstanced, when pain has been 
deadened by time, and both parties strive to converse as 
if they had forgotten what the sight of each other never 
fails to recall. Presently Lady Mary Coke appeared, 
who was welcomed with extraordinary kindness, and 
seemed to have been expected. She was all gracious- 
ness in return, but august beyond her usual dignity, 
like a person wound up to act a solemn part on some 
important occasion. Next entered the Earl of March,* 
looking excessively out of humour. He paid his respects 
sullenly to their graces, made her Ladyship a very 
grave bow, then, spying my mother, cleared up his 
countenance, as if thinking " Ah ! here will be a res- 
source ;" and sitting down by her, he began to rattle 
away upon whatever news occupied the town at that 
moment. The duke and duchess joined in the con- 
versation whenever they had an opportunity, and were 
visibly anxious to make Lady Mary bear a part in it 
also ; but they toiled at that pump in vain : dry mono- 
syllables and stately bows of assent being all their ut- 
most efforts could draw forth. I need not describe the 
pantomime, for you have seen it a hundred times, and I 
a thousand. At last, the Duchess, perceiving my 

* Afterwards Duke of Queensberry. — Ed. 



( 82 ) 

mother about to rise, caught her by the sleeve, and 
whispered, "No, no; don't go; pray out-stay them. 
" I want to speak to you." In the second that whisper 
lasted, Lord March contrived to turn on his heel and 
escape, without looking behind him. Lady Mary staid 
a little longer, still magnificently silent ; then departed, 
high and mighty as she came. 

When the door was fairly shut upon her, "Now," 
said the Duchess, " do, I beseech you, tell us the niean- 
" ing of all this ?" " The meaning of what ?" asked my 
mother. " Why, of these two people's behaviour to 
" each other." " Nay, how can I tell you anything 
" about it ?" " Why, are not you in the secret ? Don't 
" you know they are going to be married ? " " Not I, 
" indeed ; it is the last thing I should have thought of." 
" Why, truly," rejoined the duchess, "it would not 
" have occurred readily to me ; yet so it is : behold it 
" under Lady Mary's own hand ! " And she produced 
a letter in which Lady Mary announced that Lord 
March had been pleased to make his addresses to her : 
his preference assuredly did her great honour, and so 
forth ; but her high respect for their graces induced her 
to defer giving him a favourable answer till certain of 
their entire concurrence : should either of them have 
the slightest objection, she would instantly put an end 
to the treaty. " You may be sure we did not hesitate," 
continued the duchess ; " the object nearest the poor 
" dear duke's heart is that March should give over his 
" pranks and make a creditable marriage ; and none 
" can exceed this for birth, fortune, and character. 
" She has her foibles, undoubtedly ; but, perhaps, a 



( S3 ) 

" spirit like hers may do best to cope with his wildness. 
" At any rate, that is his affair. I wrote by return of 
" post to say how very happy the news had made us, 
" and to assure her of our heartiest approbation. The 
" duke wrote the same thing to March ; and without 
" loss of time here are we come trundling up to London. 
" We thought that you, as her relation and our friend, 
" would be just the right person to meet them and 
" prevent any awkward embarrassment. But they 
" seemed determined not to exchange a word. What 
" can possess them ? Have they been quarrelling 
"already?" 

My mother, who thought within herself that Lord 
March's marrying at all was half a miracle, and his 
pitching upon Lady Mary a whole one, could give no 
clue to the mystery ; which grew more incomprehensible 
day after day, and week after week. The duke and 
duchess were at their wit's end. The lover ingeniously 
eluded most of their invitations ; but whenever they 
did force him into the company of his mistress, the 
same scene presented itself over again : he was as distant, 
she as imperial as at first. Another thing was much 
stranger yet : he had for some time protected, as your 
precious modern delicacy styles it, a certain Madame 
Arena, the Prima donna of the opera. This protection, 
instead of being withdrawn, or modestly concealed, was 
now redoubled and paraded. You never drove into the 
Park, or through St. James's Street, without meeting 
him with the Arena in his chariot. The Arena sat at 
the head of his table ; the Arena hung upon his arm at 
Ranelagh: his attentions to the Arena on the opera- 

g 2 



( 84 ) 

stage were conspicuous in the face of the audience, and 
under Lady Mary's own nose if she chanced to be pre- 
sent. Tired out, the Duchess of Queensberry resolved 
to attempt fathoming his intentions; but set about it 
very gently ; for even she was afraid of him. 

" She hoped nothing unpleasant had occurred 

" between him and Lady Mary ? " " No : nothing that 
he knew." " And yet he must be sensible that there 
" were circumstances which wore an odd appearance. 
" If one might put so home a question, Did he in earnest 
" design to marry her ? " " Oh ! certainly : he should 
" be quite ready at any time ; that is, if her Ladyship 
" chose it." "Nay, my dear March ; this is no answer." 
" Why, what more would your grace have ? I can't marry 
"her unless she chooses it; can I?" "Now, do be 
" serious one moment. You know very well what I 
" allude to. Plainly, what must she think of the Arena's 
" remaining in your house ? " " The Arena, ma'am ? 
" The Arena ? Pray, what has Lady Mary Coke to do 
" with the Arena's living in my house, or out of it ? " 
" Bless me ! how can you talk thus ? Do not common 

" decency and propriety require " "My dear 

" madam, leave propriety and Lady Mary to protect 
" themselves. She is no girl : she will act as she 
" pleases, I dare say, and so shall I." 

The springs of this impertinence could not be divined ; 
but its drift was manifest ; and the duchess, having a 
real regard for Lady Mary, next undertook the nice 
task of representing to her how poor a chance of happi- 
ness she would have with such a volatile husband ; and 



( 85 ) 

delicately hinting that it might be her wisest way to 
give the matter up, and draw off while she could still 
retreat with the honours of war : all which good counsel 
fell upon the ear of a statue. The lady, impenetrable 
and stately as ever, " could not by any means permit 
herself to doubt of my Lord March's honour ; nor had 
he given her any cause of offence." Thus baffled on 
both sides, the poor duchess had nothing for it but to 
sit still and wait the event. 

As far as her nephew* was concerned, however, the 
whole club at White's could have expounded the riddle. 
To them he was abundantly communicative, vowing 
vengeance against Lady Mary, and swearing she had 
played him the most abominable trick that ever woman 
played man. He saw, he said, that she had no dislike 
to admiration : she was a widow, independant ; of an 
age to take care of herself ; so, thinking her tolerably 
handsome, to be sure, he supposed he might try his 
fortune in making a little love. If it pleased her, why, 
well ; if not, she knew how to repulse him. But the 
big, wicked word MABBIAGE had never once entered 
his head, nor issued from his mouth ; nor yet anything 
ever so distantly tending to it; and would any woman 
in England past fifteen pretend she took him for a 
marrying man ? To go, then, and bring him into the 
hazard of disgrace with the Duke and Duchess of 
Queensberry, by catching up his first civil speech as a 
proposal, was an exploit she should pay dear for. With 
all his impudence, he durst not give them this explana- 

* Welch nephew. Lord March was son of the Duke's first cousin. 



( 86 ) 

tion ; therefore let her help him out of the scrape as 
she had thrust him into it : the whole burthen should 
rest upon her own shoulders. 

He understood his antagonist ill. No chilling de- 
meanour, no neglect, no affront, even with the Arena- 
flag openly hoisted, could provoke the enemy to leave 
her entrenchments. Finding her steadiness invincible, 
he had recourse to an opposite mode of warfare. He 
paid her a morning-visit : what passed never fully trans- 
pired ; but he got what he wanted, an outrageous box o' 
the ear, and a command never to approach her doors 
again. Overjoyed, he drove straight to Queensberry- 
house with a cheek still tingling ; put on a doleful 
face, and was mortified beyond expression at having 
unwittingly incurred Lady Mary's displeasure. Who 
could account for the capricious humours of ladies? 
Though quite unconscious of any offence, he had ten- 
dered the humblest apologies ; but she would listen to 
none : and since everybody knew the noble firmness of 
her determinations, he feared (alas !) he must look upon 
his rejection as final. Blind as you may think this 
story, he met with no cross-examination or perplexing 
inquiry into whys and wherefores ; for the good duke 
and duchess had been so teized by the conduct of both 
parties, and by that time were grown so sick of the 
whole affair that they rejoiced almost as much as him- 
self to see it at an end. 

Possibly his Lordship's version of its origin should be 
received with grains of allowance ; for, though one may 
well believe he neither mentioned nor thought of 



( 87 ) 

matrimony, yet it is likely that his professions of love 
had been more direct than he chose to allow. But 
granting them such as she might fairly take for a pro- 
posal, it was easy to ask him whether he had consulted 
his friends ; and I suppose no woman but herself would 
have proceeded to inform them of it without his partici- 
pation. 

And now let us quit love and marriage for things 
more congenial to Lady Mary's disposition. She no 
sooner began to chalk out her own path after regaining 
her freedom, than it became her chief object to connect 
herself with the court, and acquire at once the favour 
of Princess Amelia (or Emily), George the second's 
daughter, and that of the person Her Eoyal Highness 
most disliked, his declared mistress, Lady Yarmouth. 
His mistress ! — You are startled. It is not among the 
smallest praises of our late King that, "By his long 
" reign of virtue " — to use Walter Scott's words — he 
rendered such a sound strange in our ears ; that we, 
who were to his manner born, naturally recoil at the 
thought of reverencing a woman so designated. But 
for near a century before he ascended the throne, 
scarcely any sovereign in Europe had ever been without 
a female favourite thus publicly acknowledged. All 
did not lead the profligate lives of Charles the second 
and Louis the fifteenth. Some few, if married men, 
forbore giving the lady an obnoxious title, and left the 
question of what was her real place about as dubious as 
it is with us whether we should view the Head of the 
Treasury as Prime minister. Otherwise, a Master of 



( 88 ) 

the Horse or Captain of the guard could not be a more 
regular part of the State establishment. Even the un- 
gallant William, as if for form sake, appointed Lady 
Orkney to the post after Queen Mary's death; and, 
after Queen Caroline's, George the second's bestowing 
it on Lady Yarmouth neither surprised nor scandalised 
the gravest of his subjects. Nor, indeed, bating the 
name (which they were so well used to) did there 
appear any thing very scandalous in the connection; 
for if he had been a private person, nobody would have 
entertained an evil thought of the stiff old gentleman 
and his respectable housekeeper, who led together a 
life " dull and dignified " as that of your ancestors in 
Tantallon Hold. Lady Yarmouth was a quiet, orderly, 
well-behaved, well-bred, honest German ; long past 
her youth, and without the least pretension to wit or 
beauty. She treated the King with profound respect, 
and everyone else with great civility ; entered into no 
cabals, did no mischief, made no enemies ; and though 
she had a daily intercourse with the ministers, like 
Queen Caroline, never, like her, meddled with their 
business, but listened silently to what they said, and 
faithfully reported it to their master — without giving, 
or perhaps formings any opinion of her own. The only 
sin the nation could lay to her charge was, that she 
sold a few places, titles, and ribands; and in this she 
acted by His Majesty's express consent and advice — 
having refused the first offer made her, and, when she 
told it him, being asked in his German-English, " And 
why was you such a great fool ? " 



( 89 ) 

Yet pray do not misconstrue my meaning when I 
say Lady Yarmouth held the place of Queen and 
received the homage due to it, I am far from seeking 
to justify your aunt on the poor pretence of her having 
swum with the stream, and done but what she saw 
others do — the last error she could ever be accused of 
falling into. Nor yet must you take her to have been 
at this period less outrageously virtuous, or more 
lenient towards frail women, than when you knew her 
fifty years later. No such thing. But, by some reve- 
lation or inspiration granted to her alone among all 
the mortals subject to King George either in Britain or 
Hanover, she had acquired a positive certainty that he 
and her spotless friend were privately married. And 
from this faith, to do her justice, she never swerved 
to the end of her days. It could not but gratify the 
person chiefly concerned ; add to which, that the 
favourite lady, although bowed down to with equal 
respect by the whole croud of great and small ap- 
proaching St. James's, must have discerned Lady Mary 
to be perhaps the only person there who literally 
courted her for her own sake ; wanting none of the 
good things she could dispense, excepting her gracious 
smiles in public, and a gruff word or two extraordinary 
from Old Squaretoes (as he was most irreverently 
called) at the Drawing-room. Such a disinterested 
attachment claimed, at least, the return of good-will; 
notes and letters passed between them, and presently 
Lady Yarmouth's hair, or her picture, I forget which, 
shone on Lady Mary's arm in a magnificent bracelet 



( 90 ) 

set with diamonds. It is but fair to add, that the King's 
decease no way diminished the devotion vowed by the 
wearer of the bracelet to the giver, 'though the latter 
left England directly, and therefore it could only be 
testified at a distance. 

Princess Emily, a woman of quick parts and warm 
feelings, but without Lady Yarmouth's bonhommie, saw 
farther into Lady Mary's character ; for her Koyal 
Highness knew more of the world than princes usually 
do ; partly from native sagacity, partly from keeping 
better company and having a mind above that jealous 
fear of the superior in understanding which so often 
leads them to prefer associating either with people of 
mean capacity, gratuitously dubbed good creatures, or 
else with those who can cunningly veil their sense and 
act the part of butts and buffoons for interested pur- 
poses. As Bishop Watson once told me that he had 
wisdom enough of his own, and would rather meet 
with something a little more amusing in his acquaint- 
ance, so might she have said of dignity. She had quite 
enough of her own ; therefore the solemn grandeur of 
the mock princess often tired the real one, and always 
struck her as very ridiculous. Unluckily, too, her 
favourite friend Caroline Marchioness of Lothian* — as 
yet Lady Ancram — had a wicked wit, prone to discon- 
cert all ultra-gravity ; and was the person in the world 
whose jokes Lady Mary most dreaded encountering. 
Many a trick, I fear, did these able confederates play 

* Lady Caroline D'Arcy, sister of the last Earl of Holdernesse. 
Their mother was the daughter of Meinhardt Duke of Schomberg. 



( 91 ) 

her ; but she obliged them by playing herself one that 
surpassed all the rest. 

You have seen at Newbattle the whole-length por- 
trait of Lady Ancram, holding a large lute. Lady 
Mary Coke chose to be painted with a large lute also. 
Now, the individual lute, that sate for its picture bodily 
in both instances, belonged to the former lady, who 
played upon it very agreeably. The latter borrowed it 
from her, took a lute-master, laboured and strummed, 
and made nothing of it, because she had no ear, and, 
like Hortensio's pupil in Shakespear, was subject to 
mistake her frets and fingering.* After a reasonable 
time, Lady Ancram wished to have her lute back 
again ; but Lady Mary, equally loth to buy an instru- 
ment for herself, or to give over strumming as a lost 
cause, found twenty excuses for still keeping possession, 
in spite of repeated billets, serious and comic, that 
came to dun her in English, French, and Italian. As 
a last resource, Lady Ancram resolved to try dunning 
her in German, — a language she knew her to be 
intently studying (with much the same success as the 
lute) for the sake of their royal friend and that of 
Queen Yarmouth. This required Princess Emily's 
assistance. She wrote a proper note for Lady Ancram 
to copy, and remained in good hope of seeing some 
curious Anglo-German jargon in answer. But the 
event was better still, and far exceeded their expecta- 

* " I did but tell her she mistook her frets, 

And bowed her hand to teach her fingering." 

Taming of the Shrew. 



( 92 ) 

tions. Lady Mary arrived with an air of inward satis- 
faction, and soon fell to moralize on most people's 
aptness to overrate their own talents. Then proceeding 
to apply — as it behoves a pious preacher — " Why, now, 
" madam, between ourselves, there's my Lady Ancram, 
" She is very clever — no dispute of that ; but, really, 
" she can't do every thing, as she will fancy she can. 
" In strict confidence, I'll show your Eoyal Highness a 
" note I have had from her in what she takes to be 
" German. Do but look at it. German, indeed ! Your 
" K.H., who knows what German is, will be amused 
" with the bungling, blundering attempt she has made 
" to write a language she knows nothing of." The 
Princess, not daring to move a muscle for fear of 
betraying herself, shook her head pityingly over her 
own note ; and confessing what was strictly true — 
but how true the other little suspected — " that, to be 
" sure, poor Lady Ancram could not write a word of 
" German," allowed Lady Mary to go off in triumph. 

All this while a youth was growing up in the same 
high quarter, whose name Lady Mary would not will- 
ingly have had left out of her history. You are aware 
I mean Edward Duke of York : and curious, I do not 
doubt, to inquire his character. As people will take 
liberties with their own relations, it was given very 
concisely by his aunt Princess Emily, when, in after- 
days, talking to a friend of mine, she described his late 
Majesty's brothers, all in a lump, as " the best-humoured 
" asses that ever were born." With regard to one of 
them — Henry Duke of Cumberland — the expression, 



( 93 ) 

however strong, was happy, almost picturesque; no 
alteration could mend it Not so for the duke of 
Gloucester; who, though a weak man, with many 
failings, had good qualities and princely manners, and 
could not justly be pronounced a fool. Nor did the 
duke of York's folly, I believe, approach the towering 
height of his brother Cumberland's ; but I have always 
heard that he was silly, frivolous, heartless ; void alike 
of steadiness and principle ; a libertine in his practice, 
and in society one of those incessant chatterers who 
must by necessity utter a vast deal of nonsense. 
Horace Walpole's letters record the laugh that arose 
on Prince Edward's asking a lady how she liked Young 
Clackit in the farce. You see the cause. Young 
Clackit struck the company as so precisely his High- 
ness's very self, that it got the better of a respect which 
daily familiarity with royalty, here and there and every- 
where, had not then worn away. He was the first of his 
race who began the good work of demolishing it, by 
running about giddily to all sorts of places with all 
sorts of people — of course, principally the worst sort — 
until his frolics won the public attention, and the Duke 
of York's crew grew a phrase used, as the lawyers 
say, in common parlance. 

The friendship — or call it league — he formed with 
the Delavals, a family renowned for their wild profli- 
gacy, spread his fame through the northern counties, 
where he more than once visited Sir Francis Delaval 
and his sister Lady Mezborough at their country-seats ; 
and Yorkshire rang long and loudly of the orgies therein 



( 94 ) 

celebrated. The most innocent of their pastimes con- 
sisted of practical jokes played on each other, and, if 
possible, on some luckless stranger of an age or cha- 
racter to render such pleasantry an affront. This man 
saw his bed sink through the floor just as he was 
stepping into it; that was awakened before day by a 
sluice of cold water from the ceiling. The gentlemen 
started out of closets to catch the ladies at their toilets ; 
the ladies stole and hid necessary parts of the gentle- 
men's dress in revenge. Mr. Wedderburne, afterwards 
Chancellor, passing near one of these enchanted castles 
when going the circuit, thought it proper to pay his 
duty to the King's brother, and was received with much 
civility ; in secret with exultation, for he and his wife 
were fresh game, of the right breed. But a fearful 
figure in a white sheet appearing in the middle of their 
bedchamber, which, upon examining it, he found full of 
trap-doors, he took Mrs. Wedderburne away betimes 
next morning, without the ceremony of bidding his 
Koyal Highness farewell. 

Among the motley tribe of gamblers, jockies, boon 
companions, fiddlers, singers, and writers of good (i. e. 
infamous) songs, who enlivened this illustrious associa- 
tion, Foote, the famous mimic actor, held an eminent 
place, and paid no less than one of his limbs for the 
honour. He rode very ill ; therefore it was an excellent 
joke to mount him upon a vicious horse, declared gentle 
enough to carry any lady. The animal threw him, as 
might be expected, and the surgeons could save his life 
only by instantly cutting off a leg which he had frac- 



( 95 ) 

tured in a horrible manner. However, the accident 
made his fortune : since the Duke, feeling some com- 
punction on the occasion, engaged the King to give him 
the patent of the little theatre in the Haymarket ; the 
source of all his future affluence. 

Considering the inglorious nature of the Duke of 
York's brief career, you will wonder to hear that high 
expectations of him were entertained in his childhood 
— at least by his parents : I know not whether by any 
one beside. But he was decidedly their favourite son, 
and their preference of him to his eldest brother a feeling 
openly avowed. Some distinguished foreigner praising 
the latter — " Oh, aye," replied the Prince of Wales, 
coldly — " Yes ; George is a good boy ; but Edward has 
something in him, I assure you. Edward will be 
somebody. You will hear of him one of these days." 
And even when both were advancing to the age of men, 
the Princess Dowager took little pains — not enough — 
to conceal the same partiality. The reasons of it I have 
a mind to make Dr. Johnson assign instead of myself ; 
his words being so much better than mine, and the 
passage I shall quote so apposite ; although beginning 
with a position cruelly discourteous. 

" Women, by whatever fate, always judge absurdly of 
the intellects of boys." 

I am afraid this comes nearer the truth than one 
would wish to admit. But then I maintain that the 
mind has a sex, notwithstanding a common saying to 
the contrary; and minds may occasionally be mis- 
placed — lodged on wrong habitations. A voice I once 



( 96 ) 

dearly loved to listen to used to assert that there were 
in the world almost as many he-women as she-women, 
instancing particularly a whole nourishing family of 
brothers and sisters, who had not any thing like a MAN 
among them. With this Caveat let Dr. Johnson 
go on : — 

" The vivacity and confidence which attract female 
" admiration are seldom produced in early life, but by 
" ignorance at least, if not by stupidity ; for they proceed 
" not from confidence of right, but fearlessness of wrong. 
" Whoever has a clear apprehension must have quick 
" sensibility, and where he has no sufficient reason to 
" trust his own judgement, will proceed with doubt and 
" caution, because he perpetually dreads the disgrace of 
" error. The pain of miscarriage is proportionate to the 
" desire of excellence ; therefore till men are hardened 

" diffidence is found the inseparable associate 

" of understanding." 

Here Johnson, without knowing it, was drawing an 
exact picture of the royal house, and pointing out 
accurately how the Heir of the Crown, silent, modest, 
and easily abashed, differed from his next brother, 
whom brisk animal spirits and volubility of speech, 
added to that first of gifts a good assurance — hourly 
strengthened by encouragement — enabled to join in, or 
interrupt every conversation, and always say a some- 
thing which the obsequious hearers were ready to 
applaud. If the other ever faltered out an opinion, it 
was passed by un-noticed ; sometimes knocked down at 
once with — " Do hold your tongue, George : don't talk 



( 97 ) 

" like a fool." And every body knows that young 
persons — or any persons — under the curse of bashful- 
ness, will talk below themselves when afraid to hear 
the sound of their own voices, and fearful that whatever 
they utter will be treated with scorn. Let alone con- 
versing, it requires considerable self-possession, if not 
some share of impudence, to carve a leg of mutton ; if 
you see all around you ready primed to laugh at your 
failure. Yet, when thus abruptly silenced, George the 
third did not brood over it with the dark sullenness 
pretty sure to follow where early shyness conceals, as it 
often does, a haughty temper, and a high, though 
smothered, self esteem. " Pride and sharpness were not 
" in him." It only tended to augment, perhaps create, 
the awkward hesitation we remember in that most 
excellent Prince ; whose real good sense, innate recti- 
tude, unspeakably kind heart, and genuine manliness of 
spirit, were overlooked in his youth, and indeed not 
fully appreciated till a much later time. 

You will think I have diverged most widely from the 
main point: but never fear, Lady Mary will appear 
again by-and-bye; and, as this may not be the last 
time I shall fly off at a tangent, you must use yourself 
to digressions and prosing. On Prince Edward's first 
setting out, hardly yet freed from a governor's controll, 
the underlings of his mother's court praised and puffed 
him as far as they durst for shame ; and the highest 
company were ready to give him welcome, because, by 
the then received notions of society he did them an 
honour in seeking their acquaintance. So thought even 

H 



( 98 ) 

Mr. Walpole, whom (with the good leave of a swarm of 
magazine-critics that never saw his face) no one who 
knew him in his life-time would ever have accused of 
servility. Kings and Princes were no rarities to him : 
nor was he really elated by their notice ; he took it at 
its current value, neither more nor less, as we accept the 
sovereign proffered us for twenty shillings without 
troubling ourselves to weigh it. When he knelt in 
form to kiss the Duke of York's hand at his own door, 
he probably had a politic view quite unsuspected by 
the aforesaid critics ; that of warding off too close an 
intimacy and preventing the illustrious young gentleman 
from skipping in and out of his house at pleasure. To 
keep at a profoundly respectful distance from our 
superiors is the true way, as he perfectly knew, of 
keeping them at a convenient distance from ourselves. 
Let each man stand in his proper place, and none can 
press heavily upon another. 

All this is now so changed that I seem to be speak- 
ing of the world before the Flood. But who has 
changed it ? They have, the Great themselves. " Tu 
" Tas voulu George Dandin." It is their own act and 
deed. Whatever you hear about the diffusion of light, 
and the downfall of prejudice, and the march of intel- 
lect, and many more fine things, set forth in fine writing, 
and retailed in speech by innumerable parrots without 
feathers ; did Princes associate chiefly with persons of 
superior rank and consequence, such persons would still 
jealously value the privilege of approaching them. 
Were eminent merit and shining talents the principal 



( 99 ) 

exceptions, it would become a mark for merit and 
talents to aim at. And this because it is, and ever was, 
and ever will be, the nature of man to prize highly what 
he cannot easily obtain ; independently of the thing's 
intrinsic worth, or its want of it. For mere eating, how 
little does a black-cock excel a chicken ? Yet nobody 
wonders that a sportsman should waste the live-long 
day in pursueing the one " o'er moor and mountain : " 
where as, if he rose early to go into his own farmyard 
and shoot the other, his heirs, in case they were 
aggrieved by his will, would perhaps bring it forward 
as a legal proof that he had lost his senses. 

To proceed. In days when royalty was yet a gem for 
few to cheapen, you may conclude it could not fail to 
shine brightly in the eyes of one who had such a natural 
bent to admire it as Lady Mary Coke. She addressed 
the Prince still more respectfully than Lord Orford ; 
but tempered her respect with all the attractive smiles 
and graces which could make the handsome young 
man feel himself flattered by the handsome woman's 
curtseying so particularly low to him. Honestly speak- 
ing — observe — the young man was not handsome. As 
described to me, he had a little, mean figure, and a 
pale face, with white eyelashes and eyebrows, and a 
certain tremulous motion of the eye * that was far from 

* Frederick Prince of Wales was questioning a gentleman newly 
come from Germany, about the family of a Sovereign at whose Court he 
had been Minister. " Have they turned out well-looking?" said he, 
" Oh Lord, Sir, hideous ; they have all white, shaking eyes." " Ah ! " 
replied the Prince, very composedly, " to be sure that must disfigure 
them; it is the case with some of my children, as you will see 
presently." 

H 2 



( ioo ) 

adding to its beauty. Their ages at this time stood as 
follows : — his barely twenty, hers thirty-two ; a disparity 
which would spoil a romance, but in real life spoils 
nothing ; on the contrary, gives a zest and spirit to 
flirtation, by gratifying the vanity of both parties. The 
lady who at two and twenty would have despised a boy 
of nineteen, finds something mighty soothing in his 
attentions when conscious of being rather past her 
bloom : while the boy, looking down upon insipid misses 
— Anglice, pretty girls of his own age — is exalted above 
measure in self-estimation by the preference of the fine 
woman whom he sees others admire, and believes to stand 
on the pinnacle of fashion. 

In this way probably commenced the friendship, or 
whatever it was, we speak of. Lady Mary, however, 
having a reverend care of her reputation, kept upon 
high ground, admitted his Royal Highness's visits but 
sparingly, and wholly avoided any suspicious familiarity. 
In consequence his letters (which are boyish enough) 
abound with complaints of the prudish strictness that 
holds him so far aloof, and inspires him with such awe 
that he hardly dares hazard the most innocent expres- 
sions, for fear of being mis-understood, and giving her 
nicety a causeless alarm. " Strong symptoms of love- 
making," you cry. I do not deny it ; yet one of these 
letters betrays, I think, some nearly as strong of Quiz- 
zing. How the world went on so long without that 
useful verb I cannot imagine : it had early acquaintance 
with the mischievous thing. He tells her he has been 
studying the History of Scotland, and is wonderfully 



( ioi ) 

struck with the resemblance of character between her- 
self and Queen Elizabeth. Nobody can question that 
this was the most deliciously palatable compliment he 
could have concocted, considering the peculiar taste of 
her he sought to please. But the woman whom it did 
please to be likened to Queen Bess by a lover must 
have known little of love and its whimsical ways, and, 
indeed, just as Lady Temple affirmed, have had no 
such passion in her nature. 

But the presumptions of quizzing do not rest here. 
Lady Susan * Stewart, the Lady Augusta's lady of the 
bedchamber and favourite, used to tell my elder sisters, 
Lonsdale and Macartney, who were her intimate com- 
panions in their youth, how the Duke of York daily 
diverted her mistress and her with accounts of Lady 
Mary's pomposity, of the aweful reserve maintained 
and the distant encouragement held out by turns, and, 
more than all, of her evident intention to become the wife 
of his bosom. Nay, Lady Augusta t herself seldom spoke 
to them (my sisters) at the drawing-room without mak- 

* Daughter of Lord Galloway. She married Granville Earl Gower, 
created Marquis of Stafford, in 1786, and was mother by him of Lord 
Granville, Lady Georgina Eliot, the Duchess of Beaufort, and Lady 
Harrowby. 

t The late Duchess of Brunswick. Frederick, Prince of Wales, who 
studiously affected English manners (perhaps in a spirit of contradiction 
to his thoroughly German father), revived the old English custom of 
styling his daughters the Lady Augusta, the Lady Elizabeth, &c. ; 
justly deeming this, our national title (like the Madame of France or 
Infanta of Spain), more dignified than that of Princess, so common on 
the Continent, and there so far from being confined to Koyal persons. 
But Queen Charlotte saw the matter in another light : the Lady 
wounded her ears, and she re-established the (German) Princess. 



( 102 ) 

ing ludicrous inquiries after her sister Mary. " What 
" is sister Mary about just now ? Is she disturbed at 
" this, or graciously pleased with that ? Come ! you 
" must tell me something of my dearly-beloved sister." 
And, with all possible respect be it spoken, the simper 
I was wont to see stealing over King George's coun- 
tenance long after, whenever he heard Lady Mary's 
name mentioned, seemed to betoken that in early life 
he too had had his full share of the diversion. In short, 
I can have no doubt that her lofty aims were a standing- 
jest with all the Royal family. 

Not that this precludes the possibility of the Duke's 
having felt a great degree of liking for her, and believed 
in the reality of hers for him. Men — men of the idle 
world, at least — are so made that their turning a woman 
into the most cruel ridicule is nothing to the purpose. 
They may still be extremely vain of her partiality, 
and inclined rather to overrate it than suppose it feigned. 
Of course, they will think of her with a good deal of 
kindness; perhaps with more than they care to own; 
but that a very dissipated man — in plain English, a 
rake — should continue long harbouring in the depth of 
his heart a romantic passion, a faithful, fervent attach- 
ment, to a pattern of rigid virtue, one dozen of years 
older than himself ! Do but consider the likeli- 
hood of such a thing ! — 

" for aught that ever you could hear, 

Could ever read in tale or history." 

We all may have known instances of such extra- 



( 103 ) 

ordinary affection subsisting where there was a consider- 
able difference of age on the wrong side ; but then, either 
the women have been otherwise than virtuous or else the 
men have not been rakes. Take the former supposition ; 
it implies the existence of consummate skill and powers 
of allurement, which, aided by the force of habit, have 
rivetted the chains that chance or caprice originally 
forged. In the latter case (a far rarer) habit may operate 
too: but the best feelings of an honest, affectionate 
heart are usually engaged; and esteem must have 
helped to ripen the man's sentiments into something 
more like the strongest degree of brotherly or filial 
tenderness than love properly so called. 

Lady Greenwich once told Lord Haddington that she 
really believed the Duke of York and Lady Mary 
were secretly married. Why she thought so, or chose 
to say so, I shall not pretend to conjecture. I should 
never have guessed this to be her opinion. I am cer- 
tain it was not that of her other sisters, or their hus- 
bands ; for they were sufficiently explicit upon the 
subject : sometimes laughing like the rest of the world ; 
sometimes wishing they could deter Lady Mary from 
exposing herself. It is past my power of belief that she 
would ever have destroyed one scrap of paper tending 
to prove, I will not say a marriage, but a promise, an 
engagement, an undefined connection, an obscure and 
nameless tie between them ; since she preserved his 
veriest notes of three lines, written in a great schoolboy's 
scrawl, to hope her cold was better, or to recommend a 
tuner for the lute of famous memory. The longest and 



( 104 ) 

latest epistle of all, dated from Rome in 1764, and sub- 
scribed " Your affectionate friend, Edward," instead of 
containing a single phrase trenching on the tender or 
the mysterious, is rather what sentimental folks would 
spurn at, as a mere matter-of-fact letter. Any gentle- 
man might have addressed it to any lady, young or old, 
or even to one of his own sex. It simply tells where he 
has been, whom he has seen, and how he has been re- 
ceived by the Pope and other princes ; concluding with 
a grumbling comparison between his own situation and 
income, and those of his " brother Sosia" meaning the 
Cardinal of York. 

Upon his death, which happened at Modena * in 1767, 
Lady Mary's affliction was excessive ; and it was affiche — 
for I must borrow a French word — displayed and pro- 
claimed to all hearers and beholders. His body being 
brought home for interment, she went down into the 
vault as soon as the funeral was over, attended by 
Colonel Morrison, his groom of the bedchamber, to 
kneel and weep beside the coffin. This Morrison, whom 
I remember an old general, was a tall, lank man, with 
a visage uncommonly rueful and ugly. " Umph ! " 
said George Selwyn, in his grave, slow manner ; " if 
" her ladyship wished to enact the Ephesian matron, I 
" wonder she did not choose a better looking soldier." 
For some years she constantly repeated these visits to 
the Duke's remains whenever the opening of the royal 
vault on the demise of a prince or princess gave her an 
opportunity : but all her acquaintance were expected 
to know that the hallowed building containing them 

* By mistake for Monaco. 



( 105 ) 

must never be named or alluded to in her presence. 
Lady Emily Macleod, while still a girl in a white frock, 
got into a sad scrape on this account. Her father and 
mother had a very pretty villa near Blackheath, which 
Princess Emily one morning drove down to see, carrying 
Lady Mary Coke with her. As Lord Lothian was 
absent and Lady Lothian not quite well, Her Koyal 
Highness took the young lady to show her the walks 
and prospects. Now they stopped to look at a fine view 
of Greenwich Hospital, now at a noble reach of the 
river crowded with shipping. " And here, Madam, this 
" way, your Koyal Highness may catch a glimpse of 
" Westminster Abbey." " My dear ! " exclaimed Lady 
Mary, rather sharply, " if you please, do not talk 
" of Westminster Abbey before me." The Princess 
laughed ; and they walked on and on till they came to 
an eminence, where poor Lady Emily, forgetting the 
injunction, pointed out the Abbey, as it seemed to rise 
in aweful solemnity from a grove of elms within the 
place. " Child ! " cried Lady Mary in her shrillest key, 
" What do you mean ? Have you a mind to make me 
" faint away ? Did I not forbid you to say anything 
" about the Abbey ? " People of warm tempers are 
subject to mistake in the mode of expressing their feel- 
ings, and confound one kind of emotion with another : 
so the girl went home and asked her mother why that 
lady always flew in such a passion at the sight (or sound) 
of Westminster Abbey ? 

Nothing could be more characteristic of both parties 
than the first interview between Princess Emily and 
Lady Mary after the Duke of York's decease. The 



( 106 ) 

one, neither feeling concern nor seeking to feign it, 
talked on common topics as usual, resolved not to notice 
the other's mournful silence, bows, and monosyllables. 
A violent burst of tears ensued. " Dear Lady Mary ! " 
quoth Her Koyal Highness, "do not make yourself 
" so miserable about my sister (this was the Land- 
" gravine of Hesse-Cassel, who had had a fit of illness) ; 
" I assure you my accounts of her are quite satisfac- 
" tory." Here the paroxysm redoubled. " Nay, but 
" surely you may trust me ; I am not in the least 
" uneasy now ; by yesterday's post I received a letter 
" from herself to say how fast she was recovering." At 
last Lady Mary, taking none of these hints — for broad 
hints they were meant to be — sobbed forth the name of 
York ; and at last also Princess Emily, losing patience, 
broke out with all the rough bluntness of her father, 
" My good Lady Mary, if you did but know what a joke 
" he always used to make of you, I promise you you 
" would soon have done crying for him." I presume 
this abrupt dialogue induced Lady Mary to send the 
incredulous aunt all his notes and letters, in order to 
show her what his sentiments had been : but the packet 
came back with only one brief dry sentence in answer 
as follows : — " I thank you for the letters, which I return, 
" and wish I could prevail on you to burn them all. — 
" Amelia." 

In three or four years, ere the wound was well 
healed, two surprising public events took place ; osten- 
sibly not at all concerning Lady Mary, yet felt by her 
as personal injuries and mortifications to herself. These 



( 107 ) 

were the Duke of Cumberland's marriage, and, what it 
probably hastened, the public avowal of the Duke of 
Gloucester's. I was then beginning to open my eyes 
and ears, and to attend to the conversation of my 
mother's visitors ; and I can bear witness that Lady Mary 
lost her rest and appetite, and ran some risk of losing 
her wits upon these royal mis-alliances. She foamed at 
the mouth as she declaimed against them. Knowing 
the whole affair, certainly one can conceive nothing 
more irritating to a great lady, duchess dowager of 
York by her own creation, yet, with all the Campbell 
blood in her veins, unable to prove herself so, than 
to behold two such persons authentically Duchesses of 
Gloucester and Cumberland. Lady Waldegrave was a 
most lovely woman ; not of much sense, but blameless 
in character and conduct. She had the manners of the 
high society in which she had always moved ; she was 
the widow of a distinguished man of quality ; but — there 
was no disguising it — the illegitimate daughter of Sir 
Edward Walpole, by a mistress whom, if report spoke 
truth, the keeper of some infamous house, descrying her 
uncommon beauty, had fairly beckoned in from the top 
of a cinder-cart. The widow Horton had no such stain 
of birth, but in every other respect was far less fit for a 
princess. Her father, Simon Luttrell,* might be pro- 
nounced the greatest reprobate in England. He once 
challenged his eldest son, the late Lord Carhampton, 
who in return sent him word that if he (the father) 
could prevail on any gentleman to be his second, he 

* Created Lord Graham, and afterwards Earl of Carhampton. 



( 108 ) 

would fight him with all his heart. Such was the style 
of the family. The daughters had habits suited to it ; 
vulgar, noisy, indelicate, and intrepid : utter strangers 
to good company, they never were to be seen in any 
woman of fashion's house, though often leaders of riotous 
parties at Vauxhall or Kanelagh. Yet Mrs. Horton was 
not accused of gallantry. She belonged to that dis- 
gusting class of women who possibly spread wider cor- 
ruption than many of the more really, or — let me say — 
more nominally vicious : women who have never blushed 
in their lives ; who set modesty and decency at defiance 
in cold blood ; and because they have done nothing, 
take the liberty, of saying everything ; as if desirous to 
proclaim that it is not principle, but want of sufficient 
temptation alone, that hinders their walking the Strand. 
Lady Margaret Ford ice said, very aptly, that after 
hearing the Duchess of Cumberland talk for half an 
hour, one ought to go home and wash one's ears. 

The King, highly offended with his brothers on this 
occasion, forbade them his sight, and notified that no 
one who frequented their courts should be received at 
St. James's. So had William and Mary done to Queen 
Anne, and George the first and second to their refrac- 
tory sons. But their successor was much too good- 
natured to enforce his edict ; especially against the Duke 
of Gloucester, whom he loved. Were you ever at a 
trial by the Peers in Westminster Hall ? When first 
proclamation is made that "our sovereign Lord doth 
" strictly charge all manner of persons to keep silence 
" on pain of imprisonment," every body is struck totally 



( 109 ) 

dumb for about five seconds : then our fair sex (if not 
tbe other) recover their fright, and go on whispering 
and clattering just as before. His Majesty's prohibition 
had like effects. It overawed people for the first 
month ; in the second they stole a visit to Gloucester or 
Cumberland House, went to Court early in the third, 
and, being spoken to as usual, troubled their heads no 
more about the matter. It soon grew a dead letter, 
which nobody pretended to mind but the household, the 
ministers, and their wives. Meanwhile, as it pointed 
out to the Opposition a cheap and safe way of showing 
disrespect to the Crown, their zeal instantly flamed high 
for the Princes in disgrace ; and never were Princesses 
so reverenced and Eoyal Highnessed by patriots, as the 
ladies whose consequence Aunt Emily overturned with 
one careless word. "Well! to talk no more of my 

" nephews and their women " 

Neither of the proscribed houses then was at all 
deserted ; but they differed materially from each other 
in point of society, for the Duchess of Gloucester main- 
tained a degree of state, approved of by the Duke, that 
gave some stiffness to her parties, which were commonly 
rather select. Unbounded freedom reigned at Cumber- 
land House, as its mistress, laughing forms and etiquettes 
to scorn, was better pleased that tag, rag, and bobtail 
(pardon the vulgar phrase) should flock in, than that 
numbers should ever be wanting. This did not spring 
from humility. — Query, does it in any case ? — She was 
not honestly indifferent to the honours she affected to 
undervalue ; but she had sense enough to know that 



( no ) 

nothing could ever place her upon the same level with 
the persons born in purple : therefore she bore them an 
inveterate hatred, and made whatever appertained to 
rank, birth, or dignity the object of her contemptuous 
sarcasms. Her sister, Miss Betsy (or Lady Elizabeth) 
Luttrell, who had a great deal of real 'though coarse wit, 
and was more precisely what the Regent Orleans entitled 
a Boue than one would have thought it practicable that 
anything clad in petticoats could be, governed the family 
with a high hand, marshalled the gaming-table, gathered 
round her the men, and led the way in ridiculing the 
King and Queen. Buckingham House served as a by- 
word — a signal for the onset of Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! — and a 
mighty scope for satire was afforded by the Queen's wide 
mouth and occasionally imperfect English, as well as by 
the King's trick of saying What ? What ? his ill-made 
coats, and general antipathy to the fashion. But the marks 
preferably aimed at were his virtues ; his freedom from 
vice as a man ; his discouragement of it as a sovereign ; 
the exclusion of divorced women from his court ; beyond 
all, his religious prejudices — that is to say, his sincere 
piety and humble reliance upon God. Nothing of this 
scoffing kind passed at Gloucester House : the Duke 
respected his brother and himself too much to permit it, 
and the Duchess, however sore on her own account, saw 
nothing ridiculous in conjugal fidelity, nor yet in going 
to church and saying one's prayers — superstitious prac- 
tices to which the unenlightened woman was greatly 
addicted herself. 

Now, upon my statement, would not you conclude 



( 111 ) 

that, of these two obnoxious couples, the Cumberlands 
must have been most the objects of Lady Mary's abhor- 
rence? Yet was it quite the reverse. She regarded 
them with supreme disdain ; but at the name of the 
Gloucesters her eyes struck fire, and her teeth abso- 
lutely gnashed together. I hope, for the honour of 
history and for hers, that no paltry female feeling lay 
lurking at the root of this bitter animosity — no original 
grudge against the beautiful Lady Waldegrave for 
having, on her first appearance, eclipsed other people 
who were far less young, and never had been half so 
handsome. Perhaps the mere circumstance of a slight 
common acquaintance between them operated disa- 
greeably. It might be more galling to have a person 
put over one's head, who a moment ago stood in the 
ranks by one's side, than to see a stranger promoted 
from another brigade. In short, I only warrant the 
fact — I cannot tell the reason. The unconscious Duchess 
of Gloucester seemed to run pins and needles, goads 
and stings into her, drawing blood every day by some 
fresh piece of arrogance or sauciness; though all the 
while, notwithstanding the airs she — that woman — chose 
to give herself (" that woman " — not pronounced in the 
cool tone of Princess Emily, but with a killing emphasis), 
the woman was not MARRIED : the Duchess of Cum- 
berland was. 

To explain this to your comprehension. The widow 
Horton, when she had secured her idiot-prince — by 
means, it was said, of some stern hints from a resolute 
brother, " un certain Alcidas qui se meloit de porter 



( 112 ) 

" Vepee " (see Molieres c Marriage Force ' — took especial 
care to be wedded in the face of day, and have register, 
certificate, and witnesses all forthcoming. The Duke 
of Gloucester, who at first intended to keep his marriage 
a profound secret, found himself hampered by the pre- 
cautions he had used for that purpose, and in conse- 
quence could not produce his proofs so readily. But 
the King, though angry, ever upright and honourable, 
as he had no manner of doubt on the subject in his own 
mind, would not suffer any to be started in Council, and 
I believe none was entertained by the world at large : 
so Lady Mary stood out alone — as she had the glory of 
doing against the foolish notions of her ignorant fellow- 
creatures in many another instance. 

A year or two after these marriages, Lady Mary 
resolved to leave the land where such monstrous acts 
could be committed, and breathe awhile the pure air of 
countries more strictly governed. It was not her first 
sally abroad. She had made two or three excursions 
into Germany since his late Majesty's accession, and 
formed intimacies with sundry German Princesses — 
Mary of England in particular, Landgravine of Hesse- 
Cassel — her professions of attachment to whom had 
authorised that wicked wilful mistake of Princess Emily's 
recorded above. The Royal and Serene Highnesses in 
question (most of them her correspondants) were now 
to be revisited at their respective courts for the refreshing 
of friendship : then she purposed paying her respects to 
the hero Frederick of Prussia, and then pushing on to 
Vienna. The hero proved not only inaccessible but 



( 113 ) 

invisible. At Berlin his brothers and sisters and his 
poor cypher queen were as civil to her as could be 
wished, and she saw many of the generals who had 
gathered laurels in the Seven years war ; but vainly did 
she spend a whole week at Potsdam, go to the opera, 
and attend the parade. Frederick, rather than meet 
her eyes, forbore enjoying his music and exercising his 
troops, and continued obstinately shut up in his private 
apartments till assured of her final retreat. Seriously, 
she persuaded herself that there was something in his 
seclusion during her stay that did regard her, and was 
too marked not to be intentional ; therefore, as distinc- 
tion is all in all, she remained nearly as well satisfied 
as she would have been with a favourable reception. 
The King of Prussia, she thought, did not take pains 
to avoid an insignificant person, one of no political 
importance. 

Ample amends awaited her at Vienna, where the 
British envoy, Sir Bobert Murray Keith, was then all- 
powerful ; being universally popular, and cherished as 
a familiar friend by the Emperor Joseph. Our ambas- 
sadors at foreign courts had not yet learned to dread 
invasions from their countrywomen ; travelling boys 
and tutors frequently gave them a great deal of trouble, 
but English ladies did not at that time go swarming all 
over Europe. The arrival then of a woman of high 
quality and unstained character, like Lady Mary Coke, 
was an incident rather acceptable to Sir Bobert, who, 
by paying her particular respect himself, insured her 
obtaining attention from the crowned heads ; to whom 

I 



( "4 ) 

he made her birth and rank fully known, and intro- 
duced her in the most advantageous manner. A duck 
— or why have not I the grace to say a Swan ? — takes 
the water by instinct, swims proudly along, and is 
happy. Thus in a court Lady Mary found her natural 
element. Here, making a graceful curtesy, playing 
her fan with a good air, and dressing magnificently, 
were all things of some moment ; and her knowledge of 
history and pedigree, foreign and domestic, turned to 
still better account. The Empress-queen received and 
treated her with all her habitual graciousness ; Joseph, 
ever a most agreeable man in society, was well-bred 
and courteous to Sir Kobert Keith's friend; Prince 
Kaunitz, the prime minister, followed his example ; 
Count Seilern, who had been ambassador in England, 
welcomed her as an old acquaintance ; the Thuns, the 
Lichtensteins, the Esterhazis, invited her to superb 
entertainments ; and, on the whole, I suppose the 
months she passed amongst them were decidedly the 
happiest of her long life. When about to go away, she 
had a private audience of the Empress, who, with many 
flattering expressions of regret for her departure, de- 
sired she would accept a fine medallion set with jewels, 
and wear it for her sake. 

All this was so much sunshine beaming on Lady 
Mary's mind. In extraordinary good humour, breathing 
nothing but admiration for the perfect beings she had 
left, she came home to recount her prosperities, as 
Madame de Sevigne would have said, to a set of cold, 
incredulous hearers. No doubt her descriptions were 



( 115 ) 

pompous, and people laughed at her, as they had the 
confirmed habit of doing, let her talk of what she 
would ; but I shall confess that, for once, I had no 
inclination to join them : her conversation interested 
me more than it ever did before or since. First, it was 
fluent — an epithet that seldom belonged to it, unless 
when anger prompted her to pour out invectives. In 
the next place, she had something worth talking of — 
the mountain did not now bring forth a mouse : heroic 
language suited an heroic subject, and when she expa- 
tiated on the talents and virtues of the great princess 
by whom she boasted herself favoured — on her spirit, 
her dispatch, her penetration, her magnanimity, her 
justice, her clemency — to listen " I did seriously in- 
" cline :" for I was very young, and very enthusiastic — 
to speak the truth — and had in my heart a greater 
hankering after heroes and heroines than I durst 
openly acknowledge, for fear of becoming as good a 
joke as Lady Mary. 

I still retain a lively remembrance of her painting 
the scene she said she had witnessed during an illness, 
in which the Empress lay for some days seemingly at 
the point of death, the physicians giving scarcely a 
hope of her recovery. Every church was crowded, day 
and night, with persons of every class from the highest 
to the lowest ; all kneeling promiscuously, and praying 
with such fervency, as if each individual had been 
petitioning the Almighty to spare the object dearest to 
his own bosom. The multitude who thronged round 
the palace-gates stood watching for the moment of 

i 2 



( 116 ) 

their opening in breathless, silent anxiety ; not a 
sonnd to be heard but now and then a sob that could 
not be suppressed — the soldiers stationed to prevent the 
populace from rushing in weeping the most bitterly of 
all. For the courtiers and nobility — if asked after her, 
they began their answers in due form, with "Her 
" Imperial Majesty," but melted as they went on, 'till 
her high titles sank into " Notre chere Marie Therese" 
uttered in that tone of true affection, that voice of the 
heart, which can neither be feigned nor mistaken. It 
was at length judged necessary to adminster the last 
sacraments ; and as the Emperor, her son, advanced to 
receive the priests bearing the Host and holy oil for 
extreme unction, the tears were seen streaming down 
his cheeks. But men are men, and power is power : 
on another day the symptoms of universal despondency 
drew from him a remark which betrayed that he did 
not view it without an inward sensation of jealousy — 
" This excessive despair," he said, " looks not only as if 
" they loved her, but as if they were afraid of her suc- 
" cessor." Yery probably no unjust inference. 

Besides such anecdotes of Maria Theresa, I had 
pleasure in learning particulars concerning Prince 
Kaunitz, considered as the wisest statesman in Europe ; 
Laudohn, esteemed by the Xing of Prussia one of its 
greatest generals ; Marshal Lacy, long the leader of 
the Imperial armies ; and many other remarkable 
characters. Then the grandeur of the Hungarian 
nobles, their ancient descent, their magnificent palaces, 
even their plate and diamonds, and feasts, and balls, 



( 117 ) 

and shows went for something with an imagination 
hardly yet weaned from the enchantment of the Ara- 
bian tales. So, I repeat it, I was for the first and last 
time an attentive, gratified auditor. Others, less capti- 
vated by the theme, grew sooner tired of its constant 
recurrence, and, besides, felt a strong impulse to 
rebel when poor old England was unmercifully run 
down, and declared to have nothing in it worthy to be 
seen or spoken of. It was true, nobody could say much 
in behalf of the tarnished tapestry at St. James's, or of 
that wainscotted ball-room which would have made a 
decent figure if seated over the market-house of a 
country town, and lit with tallow candles. We had 
always a woeful deficiency of regal splendour. But 
what were the Duchess of Bedford's suppers, and the 
Duchess of Norfolk's concerts to those of the Princess 
Something with half-a-dozen hard names? And you 
might see more massive gold-plate at Prince Esther- 
hazy's table than the whole peerage of the three king- 
doms could furnish pitiful silver ! 

This, however is a traveller's trick, not peculiar to 
Lady Mary. * Disable all the benefits of your own 
" country, or I will scarce think you have swum in a 
" gondola." But as such assertions are sure to be 
stoutly combated, contradiction, often carried beyond 
the truth, whetted her zeal to the sharpest edge, and 
trebled her passionate fondness for Vienna. Unfortu- 
nately the natural consequence of this was a longing to 
return thither, which it would have been more prudent 
to resist than to gratify. Our second visit to a place 



( 118 ) 

that has extremely charmed us on a first very rarely 
answers. I suppose, because a certain lapse of time 
enables that busy artist, imagination, so imperceptibly 
to colour and improve the sketches drawn by memory, 
that, no longer distinguishing the handiwork of each, we 
ascribe the whole picture to the latter. Then, upon 
again viewing the real objects, and finding the likeness 
unfaithful, we call them to account for our disappoint- 
ment, and insist that they are themselves altered and 
disfigured. 

How far this occurred in the present instance I can- 
not pretend to say, nor do I know the exact details of 
what passed. I only understood generally that Lady 
Mary, being now quite at home at Vienna, acted as she 
was prone to act at home, and very shortly either took 
a warm part in some feud she found raging, or else 
declared a war of her own against a court-lady, near the 
Empress's person, and long established in her favour. 
The Empress was so unreasonable and unjust as to side 
with her Grande Maitresse ; perhaps, too, to think that 
an officious foreigner had no business to come and 
meddle with the intrigues of her court, much less to 
lead parties to stir up dissensions. No more audiences 
or medallions were to be obtained ; the sovereign's 
frown had its accustomed effect upon the courtiers ; 
and there was no doing what might so readily be done 
in England, if the King had spit in your face, or, for 
that matter, you in his ; no leaguing yourself with the 
friends of freedom, and holding your head higher than 
ever. Lady Mary left the territories of her enemy in 



( 119 ) 

compleat, thorough, perfect dudgeon: with only one 
consolation, videlicet, as perfect a conviction that 
Maria Theresa, the last of the illustrious line of 
Austria, the Empress of Germany, the Queen of Hun- 
gary, the leading power of Europe, was her enemy — 
HERS ! 

I remember hearing it suggested that some rumours 
respecting the deceased Duke of York might have 
reached the Empress's ear, and, as she was much surprised 
at Lady Mary's unlooked-for appearance a second time, 
led her to suspect the wandering heroine of evil designs on 
the heart and hand of Joseph. This I utterly disbelieve. 
I dare say her Imperial Majesty knew mankind better 
than to apprehend any danger for her son (a man of 
full age, already twice married,) from the wiles of a fair 
traveller, considerably on the wrinkled side of forty. 
But the surmise was not a little agreeable to Lady Mary, 
as I myself ascertained ten or twelve years afterwards. 
I must defer telling you how, for it would be too long 
a parenthesis at present. 

From Vienna she pursued her way through the Tyrol 
into Italy, at every step meeting with those difficulties 
and disasters which seem to beset us, by some fatality? 
whenever we ourselves are prodigiously out of humour ; 
just as every species of food is nauseous to the taste 
when our stomachs are loaded with bile. Italy would 
not do at all ; so, bending her course homewards, she 
next visited Paris, but only to undergo additional evils. 
The young king and queen of France had but lately 
assumed the crown destined to be torn from their 



( 120 ) 

heads in so cruel a manner, and were now in the zenith 
of apparent prosperity, enjoying that brilliant deceitful 
calm so finely pictured by Gray — 

" Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, 
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm, 
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes, 
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm." 

In those days one of the unfortunate queen's chief 
sins appears to have been a want of attention to that re- 
sentful part of the Creation, Old Women, and consequent 
disregard of all the forms, etiquettes, decorums, and 
nice observances which old women value and recom- 
mend — not always unwisely, as her melancholy history 
may prove. Now, imagine a tall, elderly, English, 
noblewoman, full fraught with all these offensive things, 
wearing a large flat hoop, long ruffles, and a sweeping 
train, holding herself very upright, speaking very bad 
French, and, to crown all, abusing the Queen's mother 
without mercy. I say imagine such a wight arriving 
amidst the revelry then reigning at Versailles, and 
judge whether the giddy crew and their leader were 
likely to receive her with open arms ? Probably poor 
Marie Antoinette rejoiced to have so fair a pretext as 
this grave personage's recent disgrace at Vienna for 
declining to be annoyed with the vieille cour of Eng- 
land, in addition to that of France, which it was not in 
her power to shake off. But Lady Mary along with 
the smart had at least the balm of thinking that the 
daughter acted by the special injunctions of the im- 
placable mother, whose couriers went and came to and 



( 121 ) 

fro for no other purposes than what concerned her. So 
all was well — or ill — as you choose to term it. 

One of the most memorable consequences resulting 
from this last luckless expedition was a breach between 
Lady Mary and Horace Walpole, once her intimate 
acquaintance, her correspondant, the poet of her praise. 
He had always been more or less guilty of laughing at 
her, it is true; but that was what most of her friends 
took the liberty of doing, and his printed letters show 
you it might be done with impunity, for she was so 
cased in self-satisfaction that the keenest raillery, if 
couched in civil language, would pass upon her for a 
compliment. So their intimacy remained unaltered. 
But he had gradually cooled towards her ever since she 
took the field so fiercely against his niece, the duchess 
of Gloucester ; and now, when life's flowery season was 
closed for both, when she was of the middle age and he 
a humoursome old bachelor, her imprudence put his 
remaining regard to a test it could not stand. When 
you approach the confines of fifty, dear Car, avoid, as 
far as you may, having any kind of difference with a 
young beauty. If it cannot be helped, manage it by 
yourself, meekly and silently, and never — oh ! never ! 
— expect a MAN, an old acquaintance, an old friend, 
even an old lover — no, not if parson of the parish, not 
if your confessor (supposing you a Catholic) — to espouse 
your cause with zeal or readiness. Lady Mary's ma- 
lignant stars, or her genius for quarrelling, led her to 
fall out with Lady Barrymore, a daughter of the famous 
Lady Harrington — "daughter every way" — but as yet 



( 122 ) 

only just entering on her career ; very pretty, very 
lively, bold as a lion, and highly admired at Paris, — the 
fashion there, which is saying everything. This did not 
particularly concern Mr. Walpole, who was by no means 
one of those old fops or fools who vie with younger fops 
for the favour of ladies ; yet when summoned to act as 
champion on the opposite side to wage war with the 
fashion, he quailed, or, what was worse, presumed to in- 
vestigate the merits of the cause — point blank against 
all the laws of chivalry and friendship ; at least, so it 
appeared to Lady Mary. 

We had not the details of the business from herself. 
She returned to England in no communicative mood, 
touching either that or her greater wrongs ; commonly 
sitting rapt and absorbed in aweful, portentous silence, 
or, at most, throwing out hints, very significant, but 
not explanatory of particulars. " Well, Lady Mary 
(my mother began), " I suppose you saw Mr. Walpole 
" at Paris ? " " Yes— I saw him — as FALSE as ever 
" he could be." " Why," returned my mother, who 
had known him from a boy, and did not herself think 
sincerity his constant characteristic, "You might now 
" and then have seen cause to suspect that before 
" Lady Mary." " I know it pretty certainly NOW ! " 
and, as if too indignant to say more, she folded her 
arms, threw herself back in her chair, and looked the 
rest. We got no farther information till he arrived 
from abroad, when he very soon came to tell us his 
own story; how fairly, I do not know; how enter- 
tainingly, you shall judge. 



( 123 ) 

" My dear Madam ! " said he, " do but conceive that 
" I was fast asleep in my warm bed, at peace with the 
" whole world ; when my Swiss valet-de-chambre comes, 
" in his night-cap, sputtering and fussing, to wake me at 
" five o'clock in the morning. I must get up imme- 
" diately. * Oh, Lord ! ' cried I ; * is the house on fire ? ' 
" No ; but there was a lady in distress. Miledi Coke — 
" il lui est arrive quelque malheur ; elle est tout eploree — 
" and she must positively see Monsieur that instant. 
" So Monsieur was forced to comply, sorely against 
" his will. I huddled on some decent clothing, and 
" hobbled into my salon, where I found her ladyship, 
" tout eploree, indeed, pacing up and down the room in 
" such a taking, that I trembled to ask whether she had 
" been robbed or ravished. She had bid me adieu, you 
" will observe, and was on the point of setting out for 
" England ; so this scene amazed me the more. I 
" could make neither head nor tail of anything she 
" said for some minutes. At last, when it transpired 
" that Lady Barrymore had enticed away her confi- 
" dential courier and factotum, I fetched my breath 
" once more ; and, I am afraid, made a sad slip of the 
" tongue. ' Is that all ? ' said I. I own I deserved to 
" have my ears boxed ; and truly I was near getting 
" my deserts, for I wish you had heard the tone in 
" which ALL ! was thundered back again. I drew in 
" my horns as fast as possible, humbly admitting the 
" loss of an useful servant to be a very serious evil, 
" and his leaving her at the eve of a journey a most 
" vexatious circumstance. I did not say, how could i" 



( 124 ) 

" help or hinder it? I only proffered my best services 
" in looking for another fit person to fill his place ; and 
" then, like a blockhead, I begged her to compose 
" hei self, take a few drops, go home, and lie down ; 
" and at noon-day I wonld wait upon her to concert 
" farther measures. I might have guessed that this 
" would throw oil on the fire. Mercy ! what a blaze 
" followed ! She fell into the most absolute Tantrum 
<( you ever beheld ; wrung her hands and tore her hair. 
" She was betrayed, abandoned, devoted to destruction, 
" had not a real friend on the face of the earth. If I 
" were the tenth part of one, I should go and scold 
" Lady Barrymore, and bring back the courier vi et 
" armis. She expected no less from my former 
" professions, but now she saw nobody was to be 
" relied upon ; there was neither faith, truth, nor 
" humanity existing. She next proceeded to unveil 
" mysteries, and told me the true state of the case » 
" which, if it had been true, would, to be sure, have 
" rendered my interference vastly easier and more 
" efficacious ! Lady Barrymore, it should seem, was 
" but an instrument, a tool, in the hands of the Queen 
" of France ; and she again only executed the com- 
" mands of her mother the Empress of Germany, who 
" had projected the whole affair long beforehand. Lady 
" Mary was to be assassinated on the road between 
" Paris and Calais ; and to that end this faithful courier 
« — the sole obstacle to their murderous designs — by 
" whom her life had already been defended two or 
" three times from the Empress's myrmidons, was to be 



( 125 ) 

" wiled away at any price. I thought to myself, it 
" would have been their shortest way to poison him, 
" as the thieves sometimes serve one's house-dog at 
" Twickenham ; but I durst not utter such a word. 
" Now, dearest madam, what could I possibly say ? If 
" I had attempted to convince her that the Empress 
" did not know, and the Queen did not care, whether 
" she and her courier were at Paris or at Pekin, and that 
" their Majesties were as likely to plan the murder of 
" my favourite pussy-cat, you know I should have acted 
" as simply as the good clergyman who comforted the 
" penitent author by assuring him that no mortal had 
" ever heard of his writings. And, besides, my person 
" might have been endangered. I am not built for a 
" hero, and she is for an Amazon. I confess to you 
" those two fists of hers struck no small terror into my 
" cowardly soul ; and, as she flounced out of the house, I 
" could hardly believe I had escaped without a scratched 
" face or a black eye. I caught a little cold from my 
" air-bath in the morning, and it brought on a little 
" gout ; but that did not much signify/' 

As I said above, I will not answer for the strict 
accuracy of the narrative ; but one part of it — that 
respecting the Imperial plots conjured up by Lady 
Mary's imagination — Lord Orford neither invented nor 
exaggerated. She left us in no doubt on this head, as 
you shall see when I have finished the chapter of Coke 
and Walpole. 

The flames of discord subsided more quickly than 
you would have expected after such an explosion. 



( 126 ) 

Not that peace was ever formally made, much less 
familiarity renewed; but Mr. Walpole only withdrew 
to a civil distance ; and Lady Mary, though she hated 
him from that day forward, felt an awe of him that 
bridled her temper. To break with him totally, would 
have been to quarrel (in the child's phrase) with her 
bread and butter. For he was intimate with almost all 
her friends ; she could not exclude him from Princess 
Emily's card-table, nor lessen his influence over Lord 
and Lady Strafford. Therefore, they soon began again 
to play at Loo together, like well-bred Christians ; and 
I really think he viewed her with more indifference 
than enmity. She presented herself to his mind 
merely as a ridiculous, wrong-headed woman ; the less 
one had to do with whom the better. But that his love 
of laughing at her increased, I cannot deny. Many 
years after the time I speak of, he one day said to me 
— I forget on what occasion, it was something relating 
to her — " Lady Louisa, I will teach you to make verses 
" — good, regular verses — and we will address them to 
" Lady Mary Coke, who, you know, is famous for al- 
" ways scolding the Living and crying over the Dead. 
" I will make the first line of the couplet, and you shall 
" make the second. You shall not be able to help it. 
" Now, mark mine — 

" The more you scold the less you'll kiss " 

You may believe I was as little able to help bursting 
into a most improper fit of laughter. 

While Lady Mary was still abroad, somewhere in 



( 127 ) 

Italy, Lady Betty Mackenzie came to us, one morning, 
in serious alarm at a letter she had just received from 
her, giving most deplorable accounts of her health and 
situation. Lady Betty read us the greater part of it 
aloud. It said she was miserably ill, and without a 
human creature near her whom she could trust. Her 
maid — who, she saw plainly, was in other interests than 
hers — treated her with the greatest insolence ; well 
aware she should be supported and rewarded — no need 
of saying by whom. Not to enter into her various 
causes of complaint against this wretch — perhaps, 
indeed, it might be hardly safe in a common post-letter 
— let it only be mentioned that there was every reason 
to believe she had robbed her of her fine pearls. Lady 
Betty knew not what to think or to do ; but the par- 
ticular purport of the letter being to desire she would 
fetch certain keys from Coutts's, and search a certain 
trunk for such and such papers, she did so immedi- 
ately ; and lo ! the very first thing apparent in the 
trunk was a case containing the identical pearls the 
maid had been purloining in Italy under the auspices 
of Maria Theresa, — the nameless personage thus mys- 
teriously glanced at, and the saucy Abigail's secret 
protectress. In this predicament it availed Lady Mary 
nothing to dismiss that individual waiting- woman ; for, 
as fast as she could turn away men and maids, the 
Empress was sure to supply her with others ; every new 
one ten degrees worse than any of the old : besides 
heaping upon her all the injuries that could be inflicted 
through the medium of postmasters, innkeepers, black- 



( 128 ) 

smiths, custom-house-officers, centinels at the gates of 
fortified towns, and venders of the necessaries of life. 
Kings have long hands, says the proverb ; of course, 
the greatest sovereign in Europe might well have the 
longest, beyond the reach of which it was impossible to 
travel. Imagine what it was to be the object of such 
a persecution ! That is, imagine the pride and plea- 
sure of it. For hate, like love, has an equalizing 
power; and our inveterate foes, however loth, cannot 
avoid raising us, by their very hostility, to a level little 
beneath their own. To have, then, not a lion, but an 
empress, always in the path, and, nevertheless, so far to 
defeat her malice as to bring oft' life and limb as safe 
as if one had never offended the House of Austria — 
what a triumph ! So Lady Mary felt it. Through all 
the multiplicity of her grievances and the gloom they 
caused, we could descry a wonderful increase of self- 
importance. To use a familiar expression, she came 
home a foot taller, and looked down upon common 
things and common mortals more scornfully than 
ever. 

One circumstance puzzled me a good while. She 
often complained of rheumatic pains in her arm and 
shoulder, and, when a pang seized her, would grasp the 
part with her other hand and cry, " Aye, there it is — 
" going on as usual, for fear I should forget. Aye ! I 
" suppose I am to be reminded by this token as long as 
" I live — Aye, Aye ! ! " All this uttered with a bitter 
laugh, "un eotal riso amaro" and the air of a high- 
minded sufferer resolved to contemn somebody's malig- 



( 129 ) 

nity. I did not know what to make of it. The pains, 
it seemed, were not to be brought in " by the visitation 
" of God : " yet Lady Mary was no believer in sorcery, 
nor had she ever, as far as I could learn, been cast into 
any damp dungeon. And how one's worst enemy, 
whether Empress-queen, or Grand Signor, or Great 
Mogul, could give one the rheumatism otherwise, I was 
at a loss to comprehend ; but by putting hints together 
and listening heedful ly to all she said of her travels, I 
caught the right clue at last. As she traversed the 
Milaneze, her post-boys, dutiful subjects of the Empress, 
purposely mistook the road, and drove her full into the 
middle of a river, or a mill-stream, where it was their 
mistress's design she should be drowned. That they 
themselves must have been drowned the foremost, their 
loyalty or their villainy set them above minding ; for 
Maria Theresa had her creatures in as good order as 
the Prince of Lebanon his assassins of old. Lady Mary's 
sole protector, the faithful courier, afterwards seduced 
by Lady Barrymore, rode forward, produced his pistols, 
and compelled them to stop ; but could not induce them 
to relinquish their purpose until chance sent to his aid 
some foreign travellers, who by main force turned about 
the horses' heads, and escorted Lady Mary to the next 
post-house. While the dispute lasted she sate up to her 
knees in water, the least ill effects of which was the 
rheumatism aforesaid. 

Let me relate one other instance of this relentless 
pursuit of her, and then have done. She had always 
been a good ceconomist, and now, growing more and more 

K 



( 130 ) 

attentive to pounds, shillings, and pence, did not scruple 
taking some small trouble to save a few even of the two 
latter. The furniture of an ordinary house in her neigh- 
bourhood was to be sold by auction ; she went to re- 
connoitre it, and amongst the useful articles spied and 
fixed upon a walnut-tree chest of drawers likely to go 
for about twenty shillings ; but instead of sending her 
butler or her carpenter to bid for her, she went in person 
and in full majesty — a sure signal inviting all the 
brokers to bid against her. This was done with such 
perseverance by one swarthy shabby-looking fellow, that 
he raised the sum to a ridiculous height. " I now per- 
" ceived the meaning of it," said she : " the matter being 
" so trifling, I protest it had not occurred to me before ; 
"but nothing escapes the vigilance of THAT PEKSON 
" — nothing is below her attention. Oh ! I could tell 
"you such stories — ha, ha, ha!" (and again came the 
scornful laugh.) " I gave the man a Look which I fancy 
" he could perfectly understand, and then said to him 
" significantly, ' Well, sir, I see you are determined you 
" ' will have it, and you must ; I contend no longer.' " 
THAT PEKSON we all knew to be the omnipresent 
Empress of Germany, whose restless spite, grudging 
Lady Mary's housekeeper a cheap second-hand, or tenth- 
hand, chest of drawers, had commissioned forth Moses 
or Nathan, from the Seven Dials, to bid the old walnut- 
tree-affair up to the price of new mahogany. The look 
darted at the Jew-broker must have been worth seeing ; 
and oh! that Maria Theresa, while actively governing 
her extensive dominions, and (one grieves to add) busy 



( 131 ) 

in partitioning Poland, could but have known the minor 
feats she was supposed to perform in England ! Perhaps 
she lived the longer for her happy ignorance. I heard 
much of her from the Marquise di Circello, long the 
Neapolitan ambassadress at Vienna, who said she was 
not always grave, but, like most persons of real ability, 
could laugh most heartily on a fair occasion ; therefore 
on this she might have risked breaking a blood-vessel, 
and expiring in the literal sense of the word. 

Every body knows how quickly after her death the 
various changes devised by the philosophic genius of 
that very arbitrary monarch, her son, embroiled all his 
affairs, and drove part of his subjects into open rebellion. 
Yet at first it was the fashion here to applaud everything 
he did or attempted to do ; and while that humour pre- 
vailed, the late Lord Stafford laid a comical trap to 
disconcert Lady Mary. " So, madam," — he began over 
the whist-table — " I am quite charmed with your Em- 
" peror Joseph ; he fullfils all you used to promise for 
" him — so liberal, so enlightened ! And then what he 
" has done for Prince Kaunitz is admirable." " Prince 
" Kaunitz ! " repeated she, much pleased, " what of 
" him ? " " Why, have not you heard ? " " No, nothing 
" of Prince Kaunitz." " Oh, then, I am so glad to tell 
" it you. You know that nasty, cross, bigotted old 
" woman never would let the poor Prince have a mis- 
" tress. Well, the Emperor has declared him at full 
" liberty, and now he keeps three." The other men 
present set up a roar, and poor Lady Mary looked as 
people look when civilly patting a great dog they are 

K 2 



( 132 ) 

afraid of, and dare not kick out of the room. A joke 
was a thing that always puzzled, even if it failed to offend 
her ; but she took a magnanimous tone with regard to 
the deceased Empress, giving you to understand she had 
buried her just resentments in her great adversary's 
grave, and was willing once more to recall her merits, 
only premising " this it is but fair to say — thus much I 
" must acknowledge — justice compels me to bear testi- 
" mony " — and such other candour-breathing sentences 
by way of preface or apology. 

Now for the incident : I would not introduce sooner. 
Once upon a time, as the fairy-tales say, I took a fancy 
to divert myself with going, well disguised, to the house 
of an acquaintance who saw masks on the night of a 
great public masquerade. I was then past my girl-hood, 
but not past my shy-hood, if I may coin such a word ; the 
eyes of my fellow-creatures still had power to cast a spell 
over my tongue, which a mask seemed to set free by 
giving me something like the sensation of the little 
woman in the nursery-ballad — " Sure enough it's none 
" of I " — for this very reason, those most used to me 
were the last to discover me. " Three great oaths 
" would scarce have made them believe " I could be the 
mask who found so much to say ; Lady Mary Coke in 
particular — 'though she came to us five days in the week, 
and staid, and staid, and staid, Heaven knows many a 
wearisome hour — knew my face far better than my voice, 
and minded my presence no more than that of the round- 
cheeked marble boys that supported the old-fashioned 
chimney piece. If they, or if I, had begun battling a 



( 133 ) 

point with her, her surprise would have been but equal. 
Safe, then, upon the sheltered ground of insignificance 
(which, by the by, is a much more convenient com- 
fortable post than most people are disposed to think it, 
and infinitely the best for observation), I challenged her 
boldly to compare notes about our mutual friends at 
Vienna. I had all their names and histories by heart ; 
could remind her of everything that passed at Prince 
Such a one's fete, given in honour of such an Arch- 
duchess's marriage ; lament the untimely death of the 

beautiful Countess , to whom he was supposed to 

be secretly attached — " wonder whether her daughters 
" had grown up pretty ? were there two of them, or 
" three ? Did Lady Mary know their aunt, the Chanoi- 
" nesse, who so hated returning to her chapitre at 
" Prague ? Did she recollect the hunting-party at 

" Baron 's country seat ? And the fright some of 

" us were in when, the wild boar made towards the 
" grove of firs ? " She was quite enchanted ; so was I 
when I heard her peremptorily silence the company's 
guesses at the mask with — " Pshaw ! you are all wrong. 
" It is somebody who has lived a long time at Vienna ; 
" she knows the whole society there — that I can answer 
" for. She has mentioned things about which it would 
" be rather difficult to deceive me." Ah ! thought I, 
I may try fortune-telling next, since I see how easy it 
is to make people believe you have told them what they 
have told you. Thus encouraged, I fell to discuss the 
national character of the Hungarians ; thence diverged 
to the conduct of Joseph ; and lastly, ventured to say 



( 134 ) 

outright that I understood from good authority he had 
been so captivated by a certain English lady, not far 
off, that nobody knew what might haye happened but 
for his mother's tyrannical interference. Lady Sackville, 
who was sitting by, opened her eyes very wide and stole 
a fearful look at Lady Mary, concluding, I believe, that 
she would rise in a fury and tear off my mask. No such 
matter, indeed. She bridled, simpered, fanned herself, 
almost blushed, and, I assure you, looked as prettily 
confused but as well pleased as ever was boarding-school 
girl on hearing her charms had smitten the Captain in 
quarters. 

With this last extensive tour Lady Mary's voyages 
and travels closed ; for if she ever went abroad again 
(which I doubt) it was only for a few weeks, to Spa or 
some place of the same kind. She had therefore no 
more opportunities of being at deadly feud with any 
foreign potentate. But as Sir Arthur Wardour, who 
could remember having once been guarded to the Tower 
by a troop of dragoons, lived to see himself in his old 
age carried to gaol for vulgar debt by a couple of bailiffs, 
so was it her lot to stoop from braving the enmity of 
empresses and queens, and live to dread the revenge of 
John and Betty, leagued with an atrocious cheesemonger. 
Plots against her still abounded, if you would believe 
her own report; but now she ascribed them to the 
servants she was perpetually changing, and the trades- 
people she accused of roguery. I dare say you recollect 
the set of ragamuffians composing her household people, 
who, for want of a character, could get no other place. 



( 135 ) 

The only one among them that stuck long and gained a 
fast hold of her favour was a certain Claire from the 
French West Indian Islands, a mulatto in hue, but well 
shaped, and it may be presumed no fool. A fancy some- 
times seized the watchmen of Berkeley Square to cavil 
at Claire's proceedings, merely, Lady Mary said, because 
rather late in the evening she had just stepped out to 
see a sick friend, or had been suddenly sent for by a 
San Domingo cousin. Since all she did could be so well 
accounted for, I wonder they ever parted; but every 
thing must come to some end. Claire left her mistress, 
and dived under the earth for aught any of us knew. 
She was no more heard of till, fifteen years afterwards, 
at the very least, up she started, the favourite sultana 
of Sir Harry Englefield, whose friends were never tired 
of complimenting him on his taste for the black princess 
— the queen of Sheba — " the glowing dames of Zana's 
" royal race " — and so forth. He bore their raillery as 
a great philosopher should do, gravely maintaining that 
beauty consisted wholly in form, and was quite inde- 
pendant of colour. 

Claire, then, during Lady Mary's reign over her, or 
hers over Lady Mary, stood acquitted of robbery and 
murder, and every thing else ; but the rest of the crew 
kept their lady in constant alarm for her throat, or her 
casket of jewels. However, any mortal foes were better 
than none : these suspicions filled up chinks in her mind, 
or relaxed it from its greater cares concerning the 
nation, about the government of which she took more 
trouble than the whole cabinet-council. In politics she 



( 136 ) 

always adhered to the loyal side of the question, yet at 
the same time generally disapproved of the ministerial 
measures : the opposition were sure to be wrong, but 
the others never right ; by which ingenious mode of 
viewing things she kept herself richly supplied with 
subjects of disturbance and objects of censure all the 
year round. 

Matters went yet worse in that more frivolous world 
which was equally honoured by her superintendance. 
Say what she would, protest, argue, and harangue, sacks 
were left off, ostrich-feathers worn, and a thousand fan- 
tastic dresses invented. Nay, in process of time, the 
hoop vanished after the sack, and, like Tilburina's con- 
fidante, every body ran mad in white linen. Of all these 
abominations, there was no sin so crying as the feathers, 
which Lady Mary, and I must own many calmer old 
ladies, deemed a positive badge of depravity — a test of 
virtue or vice. Perhaps she might abhor them the more 
as in some sort the test of youth or age ; for, in spite of 
the wisdom added by increase of years, she had no relish 
for growing old. Twelvemonth stealing after twelve- 
month, however, this inevitable evil would come ; and 
as she grew sourer in consequence of it, more overbear- 
ing, more contradictious, less regardful of common 
civility, temper at length got such an intire mastery of 
every other feeling, that she put the finishing stroke to 
her absurdities by contriving to hatch a quarrel with 
Princess Amelia. 

It is an ugly lineament in human nature, but cer- 
tainly friendships — or what the world calls so — are sub- 



( 137 ) 

ject to the wear and tear of time, as well as things less 
precious. Old companions (sometimes including old 
husbands and wives) do insensibly grow tired of bearing 
each other's faults and infirmities, and suppressing 
their own; as if on both sides ill-humour, waxing 
larger, wanted more elbow-room, and rejoiced to get 
rid of what confined it within decent bounds. The 
Princess and Lady Mary were almost arrived at this 
dangerous point. Nobody could be easier to live with 
than the former, but she would have the respect due to 
her observed : if Lady Mary was great, she was much 
greater ; if old, much older ; therefore she had every 
claim to a deference which the other's turbulent spirit 
would no longer yield ; and, as dispute and contradic- 
tion now and then went the length of downright im- 
pertinence, Her Koyal Highness's patience began to be 
on the ebbing tide. 

In such cases you may observe that the actual cause 
of rupture is usually next to nothing — a drop that 
makes the full cup run over — a spark that lights upon 
a pile of combustibles, you scarcely perceive how or 
when. Lady Mary sate down to cards one evening in a 
mood of superlative perverseness ; sought occasions to 
squabble, found fault with the Princess's play, laughed 
her assertions to scorn, and finally got a very sharp 
reply for her pains. In lieu of recollecting herself, she 
took fire, and retorted more sharply still. The Princess 
declined farther altercation, with an air that said, 
" I remember who I am," and the company gazed at 
each other in silence. When the party broke up, Lady 



( 138 ) 

Mary departed unspoken to, and all concluded she 
would be admitted into that house no more. But 
Princess Emily gave her fairer play than they ex- 
pected : she desired to see her alone, and calmly 
entered upon a good-humoured expostulation. " We 
" are such old friends," said she, " that it really is too 
" foolish to fall out and part about a trifle ; but you 
" must be conscious you were very provoking the other 
" night. As I lost my temper too, I am the readier to 
" forgive ; only say you are sorry, and I will never 
" think of it again." 

Here was a noble opportunity to display unyielding 
firmness of character. Lady Mary drew herself up to 
her utmost height, and answered, with all the dignity 
of Charles the first at his trial, or Algernon Sydney 
confronting Judge Jefferies, or Cornelius de Witt 
quoting Horace upon the rack, or any other pattern of 
inflexible virtue you can name : " Madam, I respect 
" your Eoyal Highness, as I ought ; my loyalty to your 
" illustrious house has been sufficiently proved, my 
" attachment to your person is beyond dispute ; but I 
" cannot give up my integrity and honour — I cannot 
"retract the opinions I have once delivered while I 
" continue persuaded they are just. Your Koyal High- 
" ness yourself would be intitled to despise me, did I 
" act so meanly ; I am no sycophant — no flatterer ; 

" adulation will never flow from me " " Pooh ! 

" Pshaw ! Nonsense ! " cried the Princess, interrupting 
her — " where's the use of all these heroics about 
" nothing ? Who wants you to retract, and flatter, and 



( 139 ) 

" I know not what ? Can't you say, as I say myself, 
" that you are concerned for this very silly business, 
" and so let us be friends ?" " No, Madam ; my honour 

" — honour, which is dearer to me than life " and 

then followed another tirade. After one or two more 
vain endeavours to bring her down from her stilts, the 
other rose to her full height likewise, and, assuming all 
the King's Daughter : " Well, Madam," she said, " your 
" Ladyship knows your own pleasure best. I wish you 
" health and happiness for the future, and at present a 
" good morning. Here ! " to the page in waiting, 
" Order Lady Mary Coke's carriage ;" then, gravely 
bowing in token of dismissal, turned away. From that 
moment they never met again. The loss was altogether 
Lady Mary's, and also the mortification. This she 
betrayed by a constant fidgetting anxiety to know 
whatever passed at Princess Emily's parties, who came 
and who went, and what her Koyal Highness said or 
did. The Princess survived their final rupture but two 
or three years. 

Very little remains to be added. After the Prince of 
Wales grew up, his conduct engrossed almost all Lady 
Mary's attention ; you may suppose not often winning 
her praise : and as for his connection with Mrs. Fitz- 
herbert, it went near to make the old Gloucester and 
Cumberland fever rage in her veins anew. The Ke- 
gency question in 1789 kindled, if possible, a still 
fiercer flame, and enabled her to do something more 
than scream her Anathemas ; since then, for the first 
time in that reign, ladies obtained a power of meddling 



( 140 ) 

with State affairs which — lady though I am who say it 
— may they never have again. While the poor King 
held the reins in his own hands, he resolutely kept 
petticoats aloof; but now his calamity forcing the 
Queen into the front of the battle, every woman be- 
longing to court, lady or lady's chambermaid, arose 
and was busy. The opposition Shes took care not to 
fall short of them in activity, and as a peaceable 
stander-by I saw enough to convince me that female 
whisperings and caballings greatly envenomed the 
public contest. A good work which Lady Mary for- 
warded with all her might ; besides blowing the coals in 
some private families divided in opinion (as many were) 
upon a subject that produced more bitterness and ill- 
blood than any other within my remembrance. 

Here, then, I think I may pause, as I have nearly 
brought my recollections down to the place where 
yours may be expected to begin. I need not tell you 
how Lady Mary passed the latter years of her life, nor 
assist you to piece what you witnessed with what I 
have related ; as you will find it all dove-tail together 
perfectly well. Her character was throughout singular, 
if not unique ; but never contradictory : you always 
knew in what direction to look for her, although some- 
times your imagination might not stretch far enough, 
or soar high enough to overtake her. 

It may be worth while to bestow a moment's con- 
sideration on the manner in which that character 
affected her relations and familiar society. People 
who plod straight along the beaten road of life, leave 



( 141 ) 

no mark of their passage ; but the footsteps of those 
uncommon travellers who go trampling over strange 
ground are in general traceable. You can distinguish 
the effects of their influence, whichever way it operates. 
If directly, as with some, it founds a sort of school : 
their example and spirit continue to bear sway even 
after their existence is at an end. With others, on the 
contrary, it works — and strongly, too — in an inverse 
ratio to what they would have wished. This was the 
case with Lady Mary, who preached us out of good- 
breeding, regular ceconomy, respect for authority, and 
many other commendable things, by dint of incessantly 
preaching us into them; and as her notions were ordi- 
narily more exaggerated than erroneous, one was at 
times half-tempted to regret the certainty of their 
summary condemnation without appeal. You may 
have heard it observed that Cervantes brought about 
an unfavourable change in the character of the Spanish 
nation, because while he demolished what was fantastic 
and absurd, his resistless attack overthrew the chival- 
rous spirit itself, and with it much that it would have 
been desirable not only to preserve but to cherish. 
The very same thing might be said of Lady Mary, who, 
without doubt, was the person of all actually treading 
on earth that came nearest to the Hero of his work. 
She lowered the tone of thinking in those connected 
with her as Don Quixote did in his readers. Every 
act or opinion bordering on the great, the noble, the 
dignified, every thing elevated above the conceptions 
of the common " working-day world," had a chilling 



( 142 ) 

shadow of ridicule cast over it, as "just suited to Lady 
" Mary Coke." And the fear of being pronounced like 
her frequently led one to stifle one's real sentiments, if 
not force a laugh, on occasions when one's young heart 
beat quick, and inwardly glowed with feelings very 
opposite to derision. 

In another respect, too, this anti-influence of hers 
had mischievous consequence. It became the ready 
shield of protection for a degree of housemaid-ish 
ignorance which people would otherwise have blushed 
to avow. If you were caught supposing Lord Chatham 
and Lord Clarendon to have flourished together, or 
concluding that James the first was Queen Elizabeth's 
eldest son, you had but to shrug your shoulders and 
cry, " Well, for my part, I don't pretend to Lady 
" Mary Coke's amazing knowledge of history," and you 
came off with flying colours. So likewise for the time 
present : you might confound the offices of Chamber- 
lain and Chancellor, and ask whether the Secretary of 
State usually voted with Ministry or Opposition, yet 
have the laugh for you instead of against you, as soon 
as you declared yourself "no profound stateswoman, 
"like Lady Mary Coke." There might sometimes be 
malice in the matter, I own : a mischievous contention 
who should scandalize poor Lady Mary most. Her 
skill in genealogy and etiquette made one flippant girl 
think it a pretty air not to know how she was related 
to her first cousins ; and another assert she could not 
see the use of bowing and curtseying to the King and 
Queen: the men, indeed, only grew a little more 



( 143 ) 

bearish after one of Lady Mary's lectures, resuming 
tolerable good manners as the taste of it wore off. To 
wind up all with something like a moral, be it remem- 
bered that we do the worst office possible to whatever 
is serious or praiseworthy, by carrying it to an extreme 
which must inevitably excite laughter ; but at the same 
time be it confessed, that we cannot habituate ourselves 
to look constantly and exclusively at the ridiculous side 
of almost any object without in some degree injuring, if 
not debasing, our own minds. 



Finished at Ditton Park in March, 1827. 






LONDON ; PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, 
AND CHARING CROSS. 



V;0 



wttMl S"7 



PEDIGREE OF THE ARGYLL FAMILY. 



James Stuart, 1st Earl of Bute. 
He married Agnes, daughter 
of Sir G-. Mackenzie. 



James, 2nd Earl 



John, 3rd Earl 

Mart, only daughter of Ed- 
ward Wbrtley Montague. 



( | — James Stuart Mackenzie, e O 

Children died, 



John, 1st Marquis 

1. Hon. Charlotte Windsor. 

2. Miss Coutts, by whom he 
had two children. 



n, Lord Mount Stuart . . . 
Lady Elizabeth Criohton. 



John, Lord B 

1. Lady Maria North. 

2. Lady Sophia Hastings. 



ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL, 1st Duke or Argyll. 

Lady Elizabeth Tolled ache, daughter 
of Countess of Dysart And Sir Lionel 
Tollemache ; afterwards married Duke of 
Lauderdale. 



John, 2nd Duke of Argyll [:rnd Greenwich]. 

1. Mary, daushterof John Brown, Esq., 
1702 ; she died in 171P-, childless. 

2. Jane Wabburton, 17 17. 



Archibald, Earl of Islay • 
(afterwards Duke of Argyll). 



1st. 
Frahcis, Earl • 
of Dalkeith. ^~ 



O Caroline. « Hon. C. Townshend. 



o ° 6 Lady Louisa. 
b. Aug. 1757. 
d. Aug. 4, 1851. 



3rd. 
Henby, Duke of 



Lady Elizabeth 
Montagu. 



6 6 Elizabeth. O 
Alexander, 
Earl of Home, 



Cospatrick i 
Alexander, 
Earl of Home. 
Lucy Eliz. 
Montagu. 



4th. 
Charles, Duke 
of Buccleuch. 

Hon. Harriet 
Townshend. 



Walter, Duke of 
Buccleuch. 



Lady Charlotte 
Thynne. 



[Created Baroness Greenwich, 
with remainder to her heirs 
male by her second husband. 
Became extinct at her death.] 



O Anne. 

Earl op Strafford. 

No Children. 



I 
O Mary. 

Lord Coke (Son of 

Earl of Leicester). 

No Children. 



O Frances. 
Lord Douglas. 



6 Anne. • Richard Wilson, Esq. 



» o o o o Caroline. • • • ° ° 
Admiral Scott. 



<|» o o o o o 



Charles, o Caroline, o Louisa. • Albany. 
Miss Owen. 



I > Charles. 



X Hugh. 



